Gerald Gierer has been involved in enterprise web application projects for more than 15 years and continues to find his work challenging and rewarding. He started his software development career working with C, PowerBuilder, and Unix, until the rise of the Internet and Java caught his attention. In 2000, he made a conscious decision to focus on Internet application development using the Java language. The frustration of working with the first Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) implementations was the predominant reason he investigated the alternatives that could make enterprise development more productive. In 2004, he first heard of the Spring framework and quickly realized how comprehensive and well-designed an alternative this was to EJB. Since then he has architected and developed many Spring projects using a range of view technologies including JSP, JSF, Struts, Tiles, Freemarker, DWR, and YUI. In 2009, he became aware of Ext JS and was immediately struck by the power of this JavaScript framework. Having spent countless hours building complex web pages from scratch, Ext JS was a breath of fresh air for the client realm. He has been working with Ext JS ever since. He lives in Geelong, Australia, but often spends time in Europe, having lived and worked for five years in Munich. In his spare time, he enjoys keeping fit, brewing beer, being outdoors, and rock climbing—a passion that has kept him sane for more than 25 years.
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