Meredith Ryan - DBA at the Bell Group -was elected by judges and the SQL Server community as the Exceptional DBA of 2012. So who is Meredith, and how did she become a DBA? What makes her exceptional at her work? We sent Richard Morris to investigate.… Read more
When looking for a suitable Geek of the Week, we wondered whether a suitable candidate might be the man who pioneered structured programming, invented modular programming and who wrote one of the first languages with features for Object-oriented programming. Yes, for a second time, Niklaus Wirth, gets the accolade of 'Geek of the Week' and shows that he is still the radical thinker with strong view about computer languages.… Read more
Ron Gruner helped to crate some of the best of Data General's Minicomputers, and then co-founded Alliant, producer of the first parallel supercomputer that was able to decompose programs to run them in parallel. He then became an internet pioneer, who created the successful Shareholder.com site, and is now working on Sky Analytics for benchmarking the costs and expenses of law firms.… Read more
Jenkins, formerly called Hudson, is an open-source server-based Continuous Integration tool that works with all the major Source Control Management (SCM) tools including TFS, and can even script in PowerShell. It is clever software written by a clever geek, Kohsuke Kawaguchi.… Read more
Peldi is one of the most likeable of the new hybrid IT generation; part entrepreneur, part geek. Balsamiq is Peldi's creation, a tool for creating mockups of software. Balsamiq has shown what a good framework Adobe Air is, and how successful single-purpose software that completely fills a need can be.… Read more
Arduino is cheap and simple way that desktop computers can monitor the physical world, and control devices. It is an open-source platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a software development environment, ideal for teaching. We decided to find out more from Tom Igoe, from Arguino's team.… Read more
Ola Bini is one of the core developers for JRuby, and creator of the JvYAML and RbYAML projects. He is also well known for his work on promoting YAML as an alternative markup to XML.… Read more
With the arrival of F# 3.0 Microsoft announced a wide range of improvements such as type providers that made F# a viable alternative to their other .NET languages as a general purpose workhorse. So what exactly are type providers, and why are they a killer reason for using F#? Why should we be considering F# for data-rich applications? To find out, we caught up with Don Syme, F#'s creator, to ask him about the latest developments in F# 3.0 and canvas his views on functional programming in general.… Read more
Chuck Moore is still the radical thinker of Information Technology, After an astonishing career designing languages (e.g. FORTH), browser-based computers, CAD systems and CPUs, he is now energetically designing extremely low-powered 'green' multi-processor chips for embedded systems. Behind everything he does is a radical message: 'Embrace the entire problem, Keep it simple'.… Read more
For a large number of .NET developers, Subversion is Source Control. The book they go to to find out how to use it is O'Reilly's 'Version Control with Subversion'. Both Subversion and the book owe a great deal to the Subversion open source development team, including Michael Pilato of CollabNet, who has worked on the project for many years, almost since the project was founded in 2000 by Collabnet.… Read more
For Windows programmers, Linus Torvalds work has suddenly become relevant. No, we don't mean Linux, but Git. This distributed Source Control system now works sweetly as a nut on Windows. We contacted Linus for a second interview; this time to talk mainly about Git, but also to catch up with his thoughts about computer languages.… Read more
Jez Humble and David Farley achieved fame through a book that tackled the least glamorous but most intricate part of the application development cycle, Deployment. It was no accident that the book achived so much attention, since it was a lively and iconoclastic take on a vital but neglected aspect of development upon which the ultimate success of software projects so often depend. We found Jez to be an interesting guy, too! … Read more
Benjamin Pollack is well known for his work on Fog Creek Copilot, and Kiln. He is famous amongst young geeks for his role in a documentary film and website 'Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks', which plotted his internship with Fog Creek back in 2005.… Read more
Eric Sink became well-known for his work with the Spyglass browser, which was acquired by Microsoft and morphed into Internet Explorer. Since then, he has succeeded at the difficult double-act of combining programming and the software business. He is living proof that it is possible to master both skills.… Read more
Professor Stephen Byram Furber CBE, FRS, FREng was one of the designers of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor. The result of his work, the ARM chip, is in most mobile phones, calculators and other low-power electronic devices in the world. At the University of Manchester, he is working on the radical SpiNNaker project which could one day change the whole nature of the personal computer. … Read more
Rob Pike's contribution to Information Technology has been profound, both through the famous books he co-authored with Brian Kernighan, and his contribution to distributed systems, window systems and concurrency in Unix. Now at Google, his creative skills are in full flow, particularly, in collaboration with Ken Thompson, in the exciting Go language, a grown-up, but radical, C with concurrency.… Read more
A whole generation of British geeks owe a debt of gratitude to Roland Waddilove. He is a journalist with a rare knack of being able to explain complex technical ideas in a very simple way. Many successful developers cut their teeth many years ago on an Atari, Electron, Sinclair or Amstrad computer, poring over the technical articles of Roland Waddilove in well-thumbed magazines
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Jorge Segarra, also known on Twitter as 'SQLChicken', was one of the finalists of the Exceptional DBA award this year. He lives and works in Tampa, Florida. As well as working as a DBA, he's a Hypervisor for the PASS Virtualization Virtual Chapter and chapter leader of the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter, and has also co-authored the book from Apress "Pro SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management".
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When the ASK.SQLServerCentral.com site started, something magical happened. A band of DBA and developer volunteers got together to ensure the very best quality of questions and answers about SQL Server. Kevan was one of them. Through a couple of happy chances, the community discovered an exceptional DBA, and a source of valuable advice.
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On moving to Cambridge University after developing the SLAM model checker used by Microsoft's Static Driver Verifier, Dr Bryan Cook's new computer locked up with what turned out to be a faulty driver. The result was TERMINATOR, the first practical tool for automatically proving that any application would always terminate.… Read more
