About Programming Classroom

Rex Jaeschke

Prior to 2009, Rex Jaeschke's training materials had only been available to students attending his seminars. In January 2009, in Sacramento, California, Rex met with Joel Marcey to discuss the idea of distributing Rex's materials more broadly via the internet. At that meeting, the idea for Programming Classroom was born. Prior to that, Rex and Joel had known each other for 9 years, and had worked together closely on several programming language and environment standards projects, as well as some consulting work.
Rex Jaeschke is an independent consultant, author, and a leader and designer of seminars, specializing in the programming languages C, C++, C++/CLI, C#, Java,™ and Visual Basic .NET.™ He has extensive experience with a variety of platforms, including those from Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corp. Rex has worked in the software industry since January 1976, on mainframes, minis, and PCs; in batch, interactive, and real-time modes; and in business, engineering, scientific, and graphics environments. In his early programming days, he wrote a lot of Basic, Fortran, and Cobol code, as well as documentation. For several years, he worked for an international database vendor. Prior to 1976, he spent six years working in applied chemistry (involved with vegetable oils and, later, pesticide residues). He has written a great deal for publication, including the following:

  • A number of books
  • The C Journal: co-founder, editor, and columnist
  • The C/C++ Users Journal: columnist
  • DEC Professional: C/C++ editor
  • Digital Systems Journal: occasional feature writer
  • Doctor Dobbs Journal: occasional feature writer
  • Enterprise NT: columnist
  • Fairfax Journal Newspaper: columnist on home/small business computing
  • Java Report: occasional feature writer
  • Journal of C Language Translation: founder, publisher, editor
  • NT Developer: contributing editor
  • Programmers Journal: C columnist
  • Softalk/IBM: C columnist
  • VC++ Professional: contributing editor

Over a 25-year period, Rex has been involved in a number of U.S. and international standards committees. These include:

  • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22: Chair of the committee that oversees the production and maintenance of ISO/IEC standards for programming languages and tools
  • INCITS/PL22: Member (and former chair) of the U.S. committee that oversees the production and maintenance of ANSI standards for programming languages and tools
  • Ecma TC49/TG2 – C# programming language: Editor of the standard
  • Ecma TC49/TG3 – Common Language Infrastructure (CLI): Editor of the standard. (CLI is a subset of .NET.)
  • Ecma TC49/TG5 – C++/CLI programming language: Editor of the standard. (MS Visual C++.NET C++/CLI  is an implementation of C++/CLI.)
  • INCITS/J11 (formerly X3J11) – ANSI C programming language: Member, International Representative, and chair
  • INCITS/J11.1 (formerly known as the Numerical C Extensions Group, then X3J11.1): Founder and chair
  • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 – ISO C programming language: U.S. Head-of-Delegation and, later, meeting chair
  • INCITS/J22 – ANSI Java programming language: Chair
  • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/JSG – ISO Java programming language: Member and secretary
  • Ecma TC41 – Java programming language: Member and convener of the API Task Group
  • Ecma TC45 – Office Open XML: editor of the standard (which is based on the XML generated by Microsoft’s Office 12 suite)
  • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/WG4 –  Project Editor. This committee handles the maintenance of IS 29500, "Office Open XML"


Joel Marcey

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Joel Marcey is owner of Twin Roots, a consulting and software development company. Joel has been professionally involved with programming and programming languages for over 14 years. He started at Intel as a Java developer support representative. In 2000, he moved to .NET, where he eventually chaired the committee responsible for the standardization of C# and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). After a brief stint as a .NET Developer at a medium-sized corporation, he started Twin Roots. In addition to Programming Classroom, Twin Roots provides technical editing services and develops custom software. Joel is also still actively involved in the standards arena, serving as the official editor for the next version of the Ecma CLI Standard.