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
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
Falcon isn't exactly new. It is a scripting language that is designed with a number of programming paradigms for multi-threaded applications. It is growing rapidly in importance. Richard Morris decided to contact Giancarlo, the language's creator, find out why there was so much interest in it.… Read more