Head First Programming

Authors of Head First Programming

Paul Barry recently worked out that he has been programming for close to a quarter century, a fact that came as a bit of a shock. In that time, Paul has programmed in lots of different programming languages, lived and worked in two countries on two continents, got married, had three kids (well... his wife Deirdre actually had them, but Paul did play his part), completed a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computing, written two other books, written a bunch of technical articles for Linux Journal, and managed not to lose his hair... a situation that, sadly, may in fact be changing.

When Paul first saw Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, he loved it so much he knew immediately that the Head First approach would be a great way to teach programming. He is only too delighted, together with David, to create this book in an attempt to prove his hunch correct.

Paul’s day job is working as a lecturer at The Institute of Technology, Carlow in Ireland. As part of the Department of Computing & Networking, Paul gets to spend his day exploring, learning, and teaching cool programming technologies, which is his idea of fun (and further proof that Paul probably needs to get out more). Paul hopes his students think the stuff he teaches is fun, too.

David Griffiths began programming at age 12, when he saw a documentary on the work of Seymour Papert. At age 15, he wrote an implementation of Papert’s computer language LOGO. After studying Pure Mathematics at University, he began writing code for computers and magazine articles for humans. He’s worked as an agile coach, a developer, and a garage attendant, but not in that order. He can write code in over 10 languages and prose in just one, and when not writing, coding, or coaching, he spends much of his spare time travelling with his lovely wife—and fellow Head First author—Dawn.

Before writing Head First Programming, he wrote another book called Head First Rails, which is an excellent read and would make a thoughtful gift for any close friend or family member.

You can follow him on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/dgriffiths