When he graduated with a B.Sc. in 1973 Mr. Dumont was one the first students to receive a degree in Computer Science; a few years before that, students studying computer science received Math degrees. Mr. Dumont continued studying Computer Science at UBC and received his M.Sc. in 1974.
Early in his career Mr. Dumont was involved with writing a complier for the predecessor of C++, running on one of the first microprocessor based personal computers.
“These were the days where the software tools were not at all well developed — About all we had to begin with was a simple assembler. I was working with a few others I had met at UBC, where we had studied compiler writing, and it seemed like a good fit. The major challenge was simplifying the language so that we had a chance of implementing the compiler in the time available. It actually turned out very well, and the code written in it lasted much longer than we initially expected.”
Mr. Dumont has continued to designed and written code throughout his career.
In a brief interview Mr. Dumont was asked to extend some advice to our students.
What skills or abilities have you needed that are most surprising to you, skills you did not anticipate needing when you were a student?
People skills are extremely important in this business; that is something I would not have expected while I was studying. One of the most important of these skills is the ability to explain complex systems to those who only want to use them for a particular purpose.
Do you have advice for students just beginning their career in Electrical and Computer Engineering? What opportunities do you see available to students graduating now?
In the time since I started working, computers have made their mark on society in a big way. This ranges from the engineering solutions they have provided, to the commercial systems they implement, to the ways they now foster social interaction. This growth was largely unpredicted, and I don’t have any crystal ball for the future. Still, it remains a very powerful technology, and Moore’s Law continues to apply. While I’m too old to say, “the sky is the limit”, I imagine there will be plenty of opportunities for those who can see them coming.
What research areas do you find the most intriguing at the moment?
I think work on “computational chemistry” is starting to produce interesting results. While solving these problems in their full glory (i.e., protein folding) seems a long way off, I think these ideas could be the basis of a career as interesting and rewarding as the one I’ve had.