My name is Boaz Rosenan, and cloudalion is the theme of my PhD research.

I started programming BASIC when I was eight years old, on an Apple II that was lent to my dad for a project. I learned a little assembly on a ZX-Spectrum we bought a few years later.  Then, when we upgraded to a IBM-PC-XT-compatible computer, my dad taught me Pascal.  When I was thirteen I wrote my first recursive program, a guessing game where the computer tries to guess which animal the player has in mind, and if it fails, it adds the new animal to its knowledge base.

At about the same age I also thought about my first programming environment, which I called PAMP, for PAscal Mouse Programming — an interactive environment where the user can build Pascal programs by selecting items from menus.  I wanted this tool because I was often frustrated by making the same syntax mistakes over and over again.  I never got around to implement this system, but it’s funny how people don’t change…  As an adult I spent a lot of time implementing Cedalion, which offers similar abilities for similar reasons…

These days I’m three years into my PhD, which I pursue with David H. Lorenz as my adviser.  When I’m not working on cloudalion, I’m either writing about it (academic paper or something in the cloudalion blog), teaching Assembly at the University of Haifa, or playing my Cordoba C5 or my Roland FP-4.  Oh, and I also have a day job, working as a Software Architect at GE Healthcare (see my Linkedin profile).

I believe in democracy.  This applies both to politics and to technology.  I believe in democratic software.  I believe in lowering the threshold to writing software, and moreover, to customizing any aspect of it.  I also believe in a democratic Internet, where users can make conscious decisions regarding their data, powered by the transparency of service providers with regards to what they do with it.

The cloudalion project is my way of promoting democracy in software and the Internet.  Cedalion democratizes the language definition process and allows anyone to participate in this process at any stage of the software’s lifecycle.  Cloudlog‘s secure dialect is designed to support the separation of powers between PaaS and SaaS providers, such that user data is owned by the user.

I believe democratizing software and the Internet can in turn help democratize other things.  This can change the balance of power between big corporates and their customers, conglomerates and small businesses and even between states and their citizens.

Sounds like a long-shot, but this is my plan for making the world a better place.