John Socha

John Socha-Leialoha (born 1958) is a software developer best known for creating Norton Commander, the first orthodox file manager. The original Norton Commander was written for DOS. Over the years, Socha's design for file management has been extended and cloned many times.

John grew up in the woods of Wisconsin, earned a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his PhD in Applied Physics from Cornell University. He now lives in Bellevue, Washington with his wife and son.

Starting at September 2010, John began working at Microsoft officially.

In the early days of the IBM PC, John Socha wrote a column for the now defunct magazine Softalk, where he published such programs as ScrnSave, KbdBuffer (extending the keyboard buffer), and Whereis (finding files on a hard disk).

ScrnSave was the first screensaver ever created. John Socha also coined the term screen saver. The built-in screensaver (night sky with stars) was one of the most distinctive features of Norton Commander, along with the famous two-panel blue screen.

When Peter Norton Computing was acquired by Symantec in 1990, John Socha left to found his own company, Socha Computing Inc. The new company developed the Microsoft Plus! add-on pack for Windows 95, and also developed screensavers for Windows 98. In July 1997 Socha Computing was acquired by Asymetrix.

Since October 2003, John has devoted himself to his long-standing hobby of model railroading. He is co-founder of New Rail Models.

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