David A. Thomas (software developer)
Canadian software developer
David A. Thomas, sometimes known as "Big" Dave Thomas is a software developer, researcher and entrepreneur. He was founder and CEO of Object Technology International, which created the products that became IBM VisualAge and eventually Eclipse.
He has taught and researched at universities in Canada and Australia, and advises R&D teams in big data and fast data, agile software development, and object technology. Thomas was the CEO and Chairman of YOW! conferences and workshops until the business was acquired by Skills Matter in 2020.
Career
Carleton University
David A. Thomas completed a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada in 1969, and a Master of Systems and Computer Engineering there in 1976. From 1969, he has had a long history of involvement with computing services and research at Carleton, and was appointed an assistant professor and then a professor in 1990. To this day, Thomas is an adjunct professor at Carleton.
In 1984, Thomas started and led the Object Oriented Research Group at Carleton with colleagues Wilf LaLonde and John Pugh. The group created a range of tools for development in the Smalltalk language including ENVY/Smalltalk (an IDE), ENVY/Developer (a team programming and configuration management tool for Smalltalk) and Orwell (a revision control system).
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