My background includes studies in music and mental health, and a stint as a technical writer at computer manufacturers, where I developed a system for designing and creating programmer’s documentation.
I have positive things to say about every book I’ve worked on. They also tend to get fine reviews, and two books won Dr. Dobb's Jolt Awards. Here are some of the more interesting products of my editorial career.
Beautiful Code: an instant best-seller because of its stellar author list, this book was a mind-twister because thirty-three chapters came in at once, and I had to treat each at the proper level, switching from numerical algorithms to operating system principles to Web programming on an hourly basis.
Peer to Peer: Another fun project with a lot of pressure, this had to be conceived and completed in a few months because the topic suddenly got hot in the summer of 2000. Having helped to identify the phenomenon, I knew most of the people working in that area, and lined up an author list so comprehensive that the book was never challenged as the authoritative statement on the topic.
Running Linux: I participated in a Linux installation in 1992 and spent a couple years looking for the right author (an unimaginable luxury in the publishing world of today). Matt Welsh produced a unique work that gave people the skills and the courage to install the system. The book has defined Linux for many people and has gone through five editions.
Mastering Regular Expressions: Few books approach the teaching of a technical topic with the lithe and engaging creativity Jeffrey Friedl poured into this book. Exercising the skills he showed in the book, he produced it with personalized tools and designed his own unique layout and character set. Several years later, I also edited the Regular Expressions Cookbook, which approached the subject from a completely different angle and was also well-received.
High Performance Web Sites: A simple book about a blazingly complex topic--and one that thousands of web designers and administrators stay awake at night worrying about. Who isn't concerned with saving an extra second or two when the site's web pages load, in order to make it more likely they keep viewers on their sites in a fiercely competitive environment? This short book, cataloguing solutions of varying difficulty, spawned an entire conference.
Linux Device Drivers, Understanding Linux Network Internals, and Understanding the Linux Kernel: None of us at O’Reilly expected to make big bucks on operating system topics such as strategies for handling concurrency, levels of indirection within data structures, and implementations of protocols, but our Linux internals series became a fixture of our technical offerings.
High Performance MySQL: Books about MySQL keep popping up like dandelions after the rain, but no one else has tried to teach the insights and strategies required to manage huge amounts of data and keep complex queries running promptly on the system. Performance of this sort is an extremely hard topic to teach because it requires a holistic view of the system at many levels; one cannot simply lay out cut-and-dried techniques, but convey the models that readers use to develop their own techniques.
Intellectual Property and Open Source: This book is unique and delightful. Can you imagine a book that actually make intellectual property law fun? It also combines philosophy with good, solid advice for people starting new projects and businesses. With stunning endorsements and top reviews, the book set a new standard for discussing the intersection between society and technology.
I never did any programming on a professional level, but managed to pick up the skills I needed to write about programming. I’ve paid my dues in Fortran, C, Perl, PHP, and JavaScript. The largest number of lines I’ve done (embarrassing to say) is probably in Emacs Lisp.
My best autodidactic undertaking was to study journals and books on software engineering. They not only helped me to understand how tools and languages are used on real projects (which I could not learn by working at computer companies) but gave me models for the development of documentation.
My introduction to O’Reilly was through a classic old-boy network. Steve Talbott had been my manager at a real-time computing company (still remembered fondly by many) called MASSCOMP. He was impressed with my use of the make utility on some complicated projects. So he asked me take over his task of revising his book Managing Projects with make. I didn’t realize at the time what an honor that was (or what a pain in the ass, either) but I finished the project to everyone’s satisfaction. I then started reviewing drafts for other editors, and Tim O’Reilly was sufficiently impressed with my comments to ask me to start editing. According to my records, I came to the Cambridge office full-time on November 9, 1992.
Politics are vital to me. I care a lot about the environment—I’m worried that we’re slashing and burning our species out of existence. But all the experts on the environment have come to the conclusion that we can’t stop the devastation without improving the status of poor and oppressed people, particularly women around the world. And since a major aspect of promoting social change is to protect the lives of those who promote it, I take a strong interest in human rights issues.
I donate money to Amnesty International, and write a lot of protest letters (which really work) about mistreated and imprisoned people.
Since I’ve derived a pretty good career from the computer industry, I felt it’s my duty to help computers be used to serve the public, so I joined Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) when it was active.
My spiritual affiliation is with Temple Shir Tikvah of Winchester, Mass., a very progressive and open synagogue.
Having survived a research project on Nathaniel Hawthorne for The Bug in the Seven Modules, I entered into even more demanding efforts covering history, ancient epics, and religious texts for Code the Obscure and my last parody (where I stretched the bounds of the medium further than they’re supposed to go), The Disconnected.