User:NathanWallach

Part-time member of the technical staff the Department of Mathematics, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Personal email: taniwallach ANTI AT gmail SPAM DOT com

Primary email: tani ANTI AT mathnet SPAM DOT technion IGNORE DOT ac DOT JUNK il

Self-taught programmer since childhood. Currently most frequently write code in Java and Perl, but have prior experience with C, Pascal, Basic (all of which date back to my early days on the Apple IIe and early MS-DOS systems), and Linux tcsh/bash shell scripting when needed more recently.

An adjunct lecturer when I can spare time (from software development and support work) to teach.

I have been involved in the local online homework system, MathNet, since 2001, and have been the project managed and led developer for almost all this time. The initial system was developed by Nadav Samet. The academic content was written by various faculty members and adjunct staff.

The MathNet system is based on the use of a Java JNLP client (replacing the prior Java applet). The early design decisions led to the system totally failing to meet the web-accessibility standards for the academic content. As a result, in 2017 research into various alternatives to MathNet was undertaken. In early 2018 it was decided to begin work on replacing MathNet with WeBWorK. WeBWorK was selected after several other systems were examined.

I am now participating in aspects of WeBWorK development needed to enable the use of WeBWorK in Hebrew. In particular, we need to help complete the support for UTF-8, work on Hebrew translations of the system and of content, and on adding support for RTL (Right to Left) languages to both the platform and the PG language.

Eventually, we will also have interest in trying to design and implement infrastructure to manage translations of the OPL to other languages, in a manner which will help support the migrations of improvements between the versions in different languages.

Finally, we hope to eventually help develop a new method to allow use of CAS calls during problem generation and grading, with the goal of supporting questions which require the verification of mathematical properties of student entered answers which seem to be beyond the current capabilities of WeBWorK.

BSc in Mathematics, CalTech, 1993 MSc in Mathematics, Technion, 1998, advisor: Ron Holzman PhD in Mathematics, Technion, 2008, advisor: Roy Meshulam