Author Interviews
Russ Olsen
Russ Olsen is the author of Design Patterns in Ruby, which applies the concepts from the seminal Gang of Four book on design patterns to the popular Ruby programming language. Design Patterns in Ruby also introduces some new patterns that are specific to Ruby. Russ currently leads a study group on Ruby and writes a popular technology blog, Technology As If People Mattered.
Barry Libert
Barry Libert is the CEO of Shared Insights and the co-author of We are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business. Libert has worked at Arthur Anderson, John Hancock, and McKinsey & Company, and holds an MBA from Colombia University. A prolific author and speaker on the value of information and relationships in business, Libert partnered with fellow McKinsey alum and President and CEO of The Conference Board, Jon Spector, to write this ground-breaking new kind of book about business.
Adam Nathan
Adam Nathan is a senior software development engineer in Microsoft's Developer Division, and the author of many books and articles on .NET topics. His latest book is Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed, one of the first titles to cover Microsoft's exciting new Silverlight technology, which has just been released in the Rough Cuts program.
Andy Oram & Greg Wilson
Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media specializing in free software and open source technologies. His work for O'Reilly includes the first books ever published commercially in the United States on Linux, and the 2001 title Peer-to-Peer. Andy is also a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and writes often for the O'Reilly Network and other publications on policy issues related to the Internet and trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society.
Greg Wilson holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, and has worked on high-performance scientific computing, data visualization, and computer security. He is the author of Data Crunching (Pragmatic Press, 2005) and Practical Parallel Programming (MIT Press, 1995), and is a contributing editor at Doctor Dobb's Journal, and an assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
Ben Long
Ben Long is a freelance writer who has extensive experience with digital media. Ben has written numerous articles and reviews for publications like MacWEEK, Macworld, and CreativePro.com, where he is a senior editor. Ben has also authored many books on digital photography and digital video, and is widely considered an expert in these fields.
Geertjan Wielenga
Geertjan Wielenga has worked for NetBeans in Prague over the past three years and is one of the authors of Prentice Hall's recently released Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform, which released first as a Rough Cut in Safari. Geertjan has extensive experience helping developers learn how to use NetBeans, both as a trainer and a documentation writer for NetBeans. We discussed the value of providing readers with the ability to monitor a work in progress, along with the state of NetBeans in this interview.
Robert Martin
Robert Martin is one of the primary founders of the methodology of Agile programming, and the author of the seminal book on the topic, Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Robert instigated the famous meetings at Snowbird in 2001 where Agile programming was defined and the Agile Manifesto was born. Robert teamed up with his son Micah for their latest Agile book, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, which bring these important development principles to the world of .NET programmers. We spoke recently to Robert and Micah about their experiences writing this book and Agile programming in general.
Micah Martin
Micah Martin works with Object Mentor as a developer, consultant, and mentor on topics ranging from object-oriented principles and patterns to agile software development practices. Micah is the co-creator and lead developer of the open source FitNesse project. He speaks regularly at technical conferences. Micah teamed up with his father Robert for their latest Agile book, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, which brings these important development principles to the world of .NET programmers. We spoke recently with Micah and Robert about their experiences writing this book and about Agile programming in general.
Preston Gralla
Preston Gralla is the author of Windows Vista in a Nutshell, which was released in December 2006 by O'Reilly Media. Preston is a prolific writer on Windows topics. He's authored over 30 books and countless articles for publications ranging from PC Magazine to the Los Angeles Times. He's a frequent guest on TV and radio shows covering technology, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Preston is also the editor of the Windows DevCenter web site. Preston discusses the major improvements, as well as some of the potential pitfalls, of Microsoft's Windows Vista.
Bruce Tate
Bruce Tate co-authored Ruby on Rails: Up and Running, with Curt Hibbs, which was released in August of 2006 by O'Reilly Media. Bruce founded the RapidRed independent consultancy (previously J2Life LLC) where his primary focus is on training, implementation, and consulting for rapid software development using Ruby on Rails.
Curt Hibbs
Curt Hibbs has spent most of his professional career consulting and now works as a Senior Software Engineer for The Boeing Company in St. Louis. Curt has founded several highly successful Ruby open source projects, including Instant Rails. Bruce and Curt explain why Ruby on Rails has taken the web development field by storm.
Benjamin Mako Hill
Benjamin Mako Hill is one of the lead authors of The Official Ubuntu Book, released in August 2006 by Prentice Hall. Mako is a longtime free software developer and advocate. He was part of the founding Ubuntu team and one of the first employees of Canonical, is a member of the Ubuntu Community Council governance board, and is now a graduate student researcher at MIT working on the One Laptop per Child Project. Learn why Ubuntu has rapidly become one of the most popular Linux distributions today, from one of the people who is making it happen.
Jono Bacon
Jono Bacon is an Open Source consultant, speaker, and writer who has been a part of the Linux community since 1998. He is now the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical, and one of the lead authors of The Official Ubuntu Book, released in August 2006 by Prentice Hall. Learn why Ubuntu has rapidly become one of the most popular Linux distributions today, from one of the people making it happen.
