James Noble (kjx@acm.org) is an independent creative researcher & programmer based in Wellington, New Zealand. After completing honours and doctoral degrees at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), James worked at the University of Technology, Sydney, the Microsoft Research Institute at Macquarie University, and is recovering from a long stint as professor of computer science & software engineering at VUW.
James’s research centres around software design. This includes the design of the users’ interface, the parts of software that users have to deal with every day, and the programmers’ interface, the internal structures and organisations of software that programmers see only when they are designing, building, or modifying software.
James’s research in both of these areas is coloured by a longstanding interest in object-oriented approaches to design, and topics he has studied range from aliasing and object ownership, programming languages, design patterns, agile methodology, via usability, visualisation and computer music, to postmodernism and the semiotics of programming.