Ted Krueger is well known for his 'Less-Than Dot' website. He is a SQL Server MVP who has been working in development and database administration for over 13 years. He was one of the finalists to the Exceptional DBA of the Year Award for 2010… Read more
Learning .NET doesn't have to be dull: not when there are geeks like like Carl Fraklin and Richard Campbell with the wit and ability to talk interestingly about it. If you don't listen to their podcasts on .NET topics, then maybe you're missing out on a great way of whiling away the time spent commuting between home and work.… Read more
As the winner of the Exceptional DBA Awards 2010 is announced, we take a moment to recognize last year's winner Josef Richberg. We sent Richard Morris to meet Josef to find out what has happened in the past year, and if life has changed for the Exceptional DBA of 2009.… Read more
Grady Booch is probably best known for being one of the original developers of the Unified Modelling Language (UML). He defined much of the way we go about the Object-Oriented analysis of applications. He's also interesting to chat to about programming, as Richard Morris found out. … Read more
Almost certainly, you use the results of Roy Fielding's work every day. After all, he was one of the principal authors of the HTTP specification, was active in developing HTML and the URI, defined REST, and remains one of the directors of the Apache Software Foundation, having co-founded the Apache HTTP Server that runs the bulk of the words webservers. … Read more
Of all the original thinkers in IT, few are as original or as amusing as Don Woods. INTERCAL, Colossal Cave Adventure, the Jargon file and the New Hackers' Dictionary all owe much to his irresistible brand of humour, and his immense knowledge and experience in IT. … Read more
Tom Kyte's contribution to the AskTom column and site over ten years has been outstanding. Much of what he says has relevance to all relational databases. His views are straightforward, the discussions he provokes are lively: Not only does he know a frightening amount about both Oracle and SQL Server, but he's also refreshing to listen to. … Read more
Erland is best known for his famous SQL Server site http://www.sommarskog.se/. It is plain, it has eight articles in it, it is short on jokes: However, it is hugely popular and one of the great 'essential' SQL Server sites. We sent Richard Morris to find out more about Erland, and he discovered a diligent and energetic teacher and mentor in the SQL Server Community.… Read more
When anyone mentions 'Kernighan and Ritchie', we all know what they are referring to: that brief book that introduced the C language to programmers, and set a high standard for all subsequent books on computer languages. Now over thirty years later it is still in print and translated into over 20 languages, being required reading for undergraduates. We sent Richard Morris to interview Professor Brian Kernighan… Read more
The Cobra Programming Language is an exciting new general-purpose Open-source language for .NET or Mono, which features unit tests, contracts, 'informative' asserts, generics, Compile-time nil/null tracking, lambda expressions, closures, list comprehensions and generators. Even if it had been developed by a team, it would have been a remarkable achievement. The surprise is that it is the work of one programmer with help from a group of users. We sent Richard to find out more about that one programmer.… Read more
Cristina Cifuentes was already well-known for her work on decompilers before she took the development of Sun Microsystems 'Parfait' bug-checking application for C/C++ source. Unlike the classic 'Lint', Parfait is careful about avoiding false positives. What is more, it is fast, and popular with programmers.… Read more
Doug Crockford is the man behind JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). He is a well-known critic of XML and guides the development of Javascript on the ECMA Standards Committee, as well as being the senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo! He is also the author of the popular 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'. Richard Morris was dispatched to ask him which the good parts were.… Read more
Bernie Cosell is a networking guy, a careful programmer, and an outstanding debugger who gets the credit, along with Dave Walden and Will Crowther, for the early programming of the IMP, the Interface Message Processor, that was the key mechanism in the building of the first computer networks. Bernie's contribution was his skill as a programmer: he could be thrown into any situation and make the software work.… Read more
With Clojure soon to be ported to the .NET framework, as ClojureCLR, we felt that the time had come to see what the fuss was all about amongst the Java Geeks. We sent Richard Morris to find out from the creator of Clojure, Rich Hickey.… Read more
If one were to close one's eyes and imagine a BT Executive, one would never conjure up Bruce Schneier. He is one of the greatest experts in cryptography, and a well-known mathematician. He even got a brief mention in thebook 'The Da Vinci Code'. He also remains an outspoken and articulate critic of the way that security is actually implemented in applications, as Richard Morris found out when we dispatched him to interview him.… Read more
It's likely that you are already using the results of Peter Norvig's work every day, if you search the internet with Google. One of the smartest moves that Google ever made was to hire the man who not only was a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence, but was an expert application developer. Now he leads a team of over a hundred researchers to discover better ways of handling issues such as the machine-understanding and machine-translation of language in the quest for semantic search. … Read more
It came as a surprise to many of us when Microsoft pulled from it's hat a rabbit in the form of an exciting, radical, language that offers an effective alternative to the Object-oriented orthodoxy. The creative force behind this language, F#, turns out to be a brilliant Cambridge-based Australian called Don Syme, already well known for his work on generics in .NET. F# has taken the specialised power of ML and OCaml and developed a versatile general-purpose .NET language. We sent Richard Morris across the road to investigate. … Read more
Although Robin Milner is best known for creating ML, which has evolved into Microsoft's new F# language, he would, had this never happened, still be renowned for developing LCF, one of the first tools for automated theorem proving, and for calculus of communicating systems (CCS), a theoretical framework for analyzing concurrent systems. Richard Morris went along to find out more.… Read more
Itzik Ben-Gan, who was one of our first Geeks of the Week in 2005, is so well known and popular because he has all the instincts of a database developer and teacher, as well as being a certified DBA. His books and articles on Transact SQL are memorable because they relish the techniques of solving practical problems with SQL. His classes have been described as 'the mental equivalent of drinking Red Bull'. We sent Richard Morris to savour the adrenaline kick.… Read more
Guillaume Laforge is the project manager for the development of Groovy and Grails, and the creative force behind it. He has since shown, in a number of projects, how veratile Grails can be for the rapid development of web applications. Groovy is a dynamic language in a similar mould to Java, but with a malleable syntax and a greater economy. We asked Richard Morris to ask Guillaume about Groovy and Grails; and their context in the new wave of dynamic languages.… Read more
