PThreads Programming

Appendix D. About the Authors

Brad Nichols is a freelance do-anything-computerish-for-a-buck kind of guy who works out of Milford, NH. He earned a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire in 1985 and an M.S. degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 1991. He started his computer career working on very hard hardware (fuel pumps and valves). He worked his way up through the hardware layers into software on projects involving embedded avionics systems at Textron Lycomming and United Technologies Hamilton Standard Division. Brad left these jobs to learn more about AI at WPI, but instead caught the Mach fever, and was introduced to threads programming in UNIX. While at WPI he also worked on an OSF/1 performance project for the Open Software Foundation (OSF). After attending WPI, Brad taught training seminars to software developers on the Mach kernel interfaces. He then joined Digital Equipment Corporation to work on the port of the OSF’s Distributed Computing Environment’s Distributed File System (OSFDCEDFSDU for short) to Digital UNIX. Now, Brad is once again on his own and spends most of his time teaching software engineers about technologies with much shorter acronyms—such as Pthreads.

When not working, Brad spends time at home trying to synchronize with his wife, Susan, and three little threads, Dan (who’s 7), Tim (5), and Cecelia (3). And, oh yes, there’s the lawn and dump things on weekends too.

Dick Buttlar is a consulting ...