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Michael Hecht celebrates 40 years at SAS!

Michael-Hecht-3.jpg-original.jpg Principal Systems Developer Michael Hecht (@hecht_jmp) celebrates his 40-year anniversary at SAS on May 29.

Michael was one of the founding members of the JMP development team (with John Sall, Chung-Wei Ng, and Ann Lehman). He has always been a Macintosh enthusiast and when I got interested in the graphical user interface pioneered on the Mac, I started asking Michael for advice and then recruited him to be on the team. His first project was an early version of the Formula Editor called the Calculator.

Michael has always been on the hosting team as the Mac expert, but he has also been the leader in improving the coding and engineering behind the C++ implementation of JMP. He took on huge projects involving engineering changes to hundreds or thousands of source code files, keeping them synchronized for months until they were ready to submit. This _50B5573.JPG-jmp.com-standard.jpg accelerated as we adopted the new features in C++11 and the standard libraries.

Among Michael’s large-scale projects he led or had a huge role in:

Inventing JString as our portable string class and implementing StringBot to extract strings for localization. Stringbot scans all our code base looking for strings to localize and making it easy for developers to support localization.
Representing JMP with Apple Development, reporting bugs, testing beta releases, begging for certain changes and fixes that affected us, attending WWDC conferences, and reporting back what new features and changes meant to us.
Transitioning TopPtr from just a glue pointer to std::unique_ptr (at the heart of JSL scripting).
Replacing home-built classes with standard classes. Changing OwnerOfArray to std::vector, which was done in two phases, embedding a std::vector, and later replacing with std::vector. Changing OwnerOf to std::unique_ptr.
DisplayBoxPtr from just glue pointer to shared_ptr (with Dan Schikore and Craige Hales).
Implementing DataTablePtr and DataTableOwner (with Dan Schikore).
Implementing importing of SAS files (SAS7BDAT) natively, rather than through TK routines.
Eliminating the TK layer to SAS. JMP builds faster and has a smaller footprint now.
Investigating the size problems for JMP under XCode and exploring dylibs until Apple helped fix some bugs.
Refining a number of standard objects and classes and host-dependent constants.
Recently improving the OSI-Pi interface facility.
Leading development for the Graph Builder app for iPad.
Working with John Schroedl on static code analysis for JMP, which is critical in finding potential crash issues.
Evolving the Mac application from Motorola 68000 to PowerPC to Intel to Apple Silicon (M1 etc.) with multi-architectural compatibility, 32-bit to 64-bit; Carbon-to-Cocoa. Led the Xcode implementation.
Pioneering a number of tests and reporting features for leaks and other vulnerabilities.

JMP-Discovery2016-fri-SSM_8482.jpg-jmp.com-standard.jpg Michael was also an important presenter, teaching us the intricacies of C++ and all the transitions in well-presented seminars. And in recognition of his huge role in JMP’s success, he was awarded the SAS CEO Award of Excellence in 2017.

Thank you for your dedication and the expertise you brought to JMP all those years ago, and continue to bring every week!

Hecht, a founding member of the JMP development team, has led large-scale projects, taught seminars, and was a CEO Award of Excellence recipient

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