Ken Shumate

The first two of Ken’s careers were sequential: service in the Marine Corps, then software development in the aerospace industry. His third career in teaching overlapped the first two: public short courses on software engineering, and more formal courses at San Diego State and Chapman Universities. His fourth career overlapped the first three; the focus of his writing was the synthesis of techniques for developing large software systems, resulting in technical papers, a magazine column on software design techniques, and five popular books including Software Specification and Design (John Wiley, 1992). In his fifth career as an amateur historian, his focus is bringing out the largely hidden story of molasses as a cause of the American Revolution.