Bios for Contributing Authors

Find out more about the authors who have contributed work to the online tutorial. Click on a name to find the author's bio and links to his or her work.

Deborah Adair Maydene Fisher Alan Sommerer
Jennifer Ball Dale Green Beth Stearns
Cynthia Bloch Jim Inscore Jim Waldo
Joshua Bloch Monica Pawlan Ann Wollrath
Mary Dageforde Andy Quinn

Links to Author's Work Bio Acknowledgments

Sound and
2D Graphics Deborah Adair, the technical writer for the Java Media group at Sun Microsystems, specializes in designing and writing documentation for software developers and other highly technical readers. She has a degree in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Washington and has been writing for the computer industry for the past nine years. The Java 2D and Java Sound trails could not have been completed without the help of Jennifer Ball, a summer intern in the Java Software Technical Publications group. With little assistance or direction and a lot of hard work and persistence, Jennifer single-handedly wrote most of the samples used in these trails. The Java Software engineers who took time out of their own crazy schedules to answer questions and review these trails also played a major role: Kara Kytle, Brent Browning, Jerry Evans, Jim Graham, Jeannette Hung, Brian Lichtenwalter, and Thanh Nguyen. My sincere thanks also go out to Tom Santos, who donated several hours of his own time to the cause. Not only did he answer technical questions and help get the samples running under Swing, he patiently endured living with a stressed-out writer throughout the entire process.

Sound and
2D Graphics Jennifer Ball writes technical documentation for various groups at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division, including the 2D graphics group and the J2EE group. She started working for Sun as a summer intern. After completing her internship, she morphed into a temporary contractor and is now a full-time employee. When she is not working at Sun, she is completing her Masters degree in Interdisciplinary Computer Science at Mills College.

Servlets Cynthia Bloch writes technical documentation at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division. She has a Masters in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Since graduate school she has worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Carnegie Group Incorporated in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and as a Senior Technical Trainer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. [PENDING]

Collections Joshua Bloch is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division, where he works as an architect in the Java Language Group. His major contributions include the Collections Framework and java.math.
In a former life, Josh was a Senior Systems Designer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, where he designed and implemented many parts of the Encina distributed transaction processing system. In the deep dark past, he held summer positions at the usual corporate research labs (Bell Labs and IBM Research).
Josh holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where he wrote a long, boring dissertation on replication, and designed and implemented the language layer of the Camelot distributed transaction processing system. He holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia.
[PENDING]

Security in JDK 1.2, and
Security in JDK 1.1 Mary Dageforde writes software documentation for various Silicon Valley computer companies, including Sun Microsystems. She has a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. She spent ten years working primarily on the design and implementation of the English-like customer programming language for the pioneering Xerox Star GUI environment and its successors. For the past eight years she has concentrated on documenting APIs, languages, tools, and systems. [PENDING]

JDBC Database Access Maydene Fisher has extensive experience as a technical writer specializing in the documentation of object-oriented programming languages. Fisher began her technical writing career on Wall Street, where she documented complex computer models, written in C++, for simulating fixed income derivatives. Before joining the JDBC team at Sun's Java Software division, she wrote documentation for ScriptX, an object-oriented multimedia scripting language, at Kaleida Labs and at Apple Computer. [PENDING]

Internationalization and
Reflection. Dale Green is a staff writer with Sun Microsystems, where he documents APIs for the Java programming language. In previous lives he programmed business applications, designed databases, taught technical classes, and documented RDBMS products. In his current incarnation he writes about internationalization and reflection APIs for the Java Tutorial. I'd like to thank the following engineers for their help with foreign languages: AJ Alhait (Arabic), Gilad Bracha (Hebrew), Norbert Lidenberg (German), and Benjamin Renaud (French). The following people provided thoughtful and detailed reviews: Richard Gillam, Waleed Hosny, Doug Kramer, Norbert Lindenberg, and Laura Werner. In their book, The Java Class Libraries , Volume 1 , Patrick Chan and Doug Kramer wrote some terrific code examples that I just had to borrow. And finally, I'm grateful for the suggestions made by our readers on the Internet. It's always a good idea to get advice from the real world.

IDL Jim Inscore has worked as a technical writer for the past 18 years, documenting API for NeXT, Kaleida, Macromedia, Oracle, Objectivity, and a number of other companies. He is currently publications manager for enterprise, server, and multimedia technologies in Java Software.
In his spare time, Jim hangs out with his family and works on remodeling his house.
[PENDING]

Overview of the JDK Monica Pawlan is a staff writer for the Java Developer Connection (JDC), and contributing author for the Java Tutorial. She has a background in 2D and 3D graphics, security, and database products, and loves to study and write about emerging technologies. When not writing, she spends her spare time gardening, studying classical piano, and dreaming of far away places--some of which she occasionally visits. The author would like to thank Pat Chan and Doug Kramer for their thoughtful reviews.

JavaBeans Andy Quinn is a Sun Microsystems technical writer who specializes in writing for software developers. Andy was one of the original guest authors on The Java Tutorial when he posted his first trail on JavaBeans in 1997. Andy graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BS in Computer Science. He has recently migrated back to the East Coast where he continues to surf and play the guitar. [PENDING]

JAR Files and
The Extension Mechanism Before moving to Silicon Valley, Alan Sommerer was a physicist on the staff of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics at Iowa State University. After moving to California, he joined Warthman Associates in Palo Alto where he did technical writing and applet programming for a variety of high-tech firms. Alan now writes documentation about the Java(tm) Development Kit for Sun Java Software. [PENDING]

Java Native Interface Beth Stearns is the president of Computer Ease Publishing, a computer consulting firm she founded in 1982. Her client list includes Sun Microsystems Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Xerox Corporation, among others. Her "Understanding EDT," a guide to Digital Equipment Corporation's text editor, has sold throughout the world. She received her B.S. degree from Cornell University and a master's degree from Adelphi University.
Beth would also like to acknowledge Sheng Liang, architect of the JNI Specification, for his early collaboration on this trail and subsequent review, and Dan Sears for his review of this trail.
[PENDING]

RMI Jim Waldo is a Senior Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems, where he leads a team developing a distributed programming infrastructure for Java. Before joining Sun's Java Software division, he was a Principal Investigator in Sun Labs, doing research into the areas of object-oriented programming and systems, distributed computing, and user environments. Jim is also on the faculty of Harvard University, where he teaches distributed computing in the department of computer science. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He also holds M.A. degrees in both linguistics and philosophy. We'd like to thank Peter Jones for his contribution of the code to calculate pi and both Peter Jones and Jennifer McGinn for their detailed reviews and comments on this chapter.

RMI Ann Wollrath is a Senior Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems where she is the architect and project lead of the Java Remote Method Invocation system. Previously during her tenure at Sun Microsystems Laboratories and at the MITRE Corporation, she researched reliable, large-scale distributed systems and parallel computation. Ann received an M.S. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and a B.S. in computer science from Merrimack College. We'd like to thank Peter Jones for his contribution of the code to calculate pi and both Peter Jones and Jennifer McGinn for their detailed reviews and comments on this chapter.

Deborah Adair	Maydene Fisher	Alan Sommerer
Jennifer Ball	Dale Green	Beth Stearns
Cynthia Bloch	Jim Inscore	Jim Waldo
Joshua Bloch	Monica Pawlan	Ann Wollrath
Mary Dageforde	Andy Quinn

Links to Author's Work	Bio	Acknowledgments
Sound and 2D Graphics	Deborah Adair, the technical writer for the Java Media group at Sun Microsystems, specializes in designing and writing documentation for software developers and other highly technical readers. She has a degree in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Washington and has been writing for the computer industry for the past nine years.	The Java 2D and Java Sound trails could not have been completed without the help of Jennifer Ball, a summer intern in the Java Software Technical Publications group. With little assistance or direction and a lot of hard work and persistence, Jennifer single-handedly wrote most of the samples used in these trails. The Java Software engineers who took time out of their own crazy schedules to answer questions and review these trails also played a major role: Kara Kytle, Brent Browning, Jerry Evans, Jim Graham, Jeannette Hung, Brian Lichtenwalter, and Thanh Nguyen. My sincere thanks also go out to Tom Santos, who donated several hours of his own time to the cause. Not only did he answer technical questions and help get the samples running under Swing, he patiently endured living with a stressed-out writer throughout the entire process.
Sound and 2D Graphics	Jennifer Ball writes technical documentation for various groups at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division, including the 2D graphics group and the J2EE group. She started working for Sun as a summer intern. After completing her internship, she morphed into a temporary contractor and is now a full-time employee. When she is not working at Sun, she is completing her Masters degree in Interdisciplinary Computer Science at Mills College.
Servlets	Cynthia Bloch writes technical documentation at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division. She has a Masters in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Since graduate school she has worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Carnegie Group Incorporated in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and as a Senior Technical Trainer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.	[PENDING]
Collections	Joshua Bloch is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division, where he works as an architect in the Java Language Group. His major contributions include the Collections Framework and java.math. In a former life, Josh was a Senior Systems Designer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, where he designed and implemented many parts of the Encina distributed transaction processing system. In the deep dark past, he held summer positions at the usual corporate research labs (Bell Labs and IBM Research). Josh holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where he wrote a long, boring dissertation on replication, and designed and implemented the language layer of the Camelot distributed transaction processing system. He holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia.	[PENDING]
Security in JDK 1.2, and Security in JDK 1.1	Mary Dageforde writes software documentation for various Silicon Valley computer companies, including Sun Microsystems. She has a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. She spent ten years working primarily on the design and implementation of the English-like customer programming language for the pioneering Xerox Star GUI environment and its successors. For the past eight years she has concentrated on documenting APIs, languages, tools, and systems.	[PENDING]
JDBC Database Access	Maydene Fisher has extensive experience as a technical writer specializing in the documentation of object-oriented programming languages. Fisher began her technical writing career on Wall Street, where she documented complex computer models, written in C++, for simulating fixed income derivatives. Before joining the JDBC team at Sun's Java Software division, she wrote documentation for ScriptX, an object-oriented multimedia scripting language, at Kaleida Labs and at Apple Computer.	[PENDING]
Internationalization and Reflection.	Dale Green is a staff writer with Sun Microsystems, where he documents APIs for the Java programming language. In previous lives he programmed business applications, designed databases, taught technical classes, and documented RDBMS products. In his current incarnation he writes about internationalization and reflection APIs for the Java Tutorial.	I'd like to thank the following engineers for their help with foreign languages: AJ Alhait (Arabic), Gilad Bracha (Hebrew), Norbert Lidenberg (German), and Benjamin Renaud (French). The following people provided thoughtful and detailed reviews: Richard Gillam, Waleed Hosny, Doug Kramer, Norbert Lindenberg, and Laura Werner. In their book, The Java Class Libraries , Volume 1 , Patrick Chan and Doug Kramer wrote some terrific code examples that I just had to borrow. And finally, I'm grateful for the suggestions made by our readers on the Internet. It's always a good idea to get advice from the real world.
IDL	Jim Inscore has worked as a technical writer for the past 18 years, documenting API for NeXT, Kaleida, Macromedia, Oracle, Objectivity, and a number of other companies. He is currently publications manager for enterprise, server, and multimedia technologies in Java Software. In his spare time, Jim hangs out with his family and works on remodeling his house.	[PENDING]
Overview of the JDK	Monica Pawlan is a staff writer for the Java Developer Connection (JDC), and contributing author for the Java Tutorial. She has a background in 2D and 3D graphics, security, and database products, and loves to study and write about emerging technologies. When not writing, she spends her spare time gardening, studying classical piano, and dreaming of far away places--some of which she occasionally visits.	The author would like to thank Pat Chan and Doug Kramer for their thoughtful reviews.
JavaBeans	Andy Quinn is a Sun Microsystems technical writer who specializes in writing for software developers. Andy was one of the original guest authors on The Java Tutorial when he posted his first trail on JavaBeans in 1997. Andy graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BS in Computer Science. He has recently migrated back to the East Coast where he continues to surf and play the guitar.	[PENDING]
JAR Files and The Extension Mechanism	Before moving to Silicon Valley, Alan Sommerer was a physicist on the staff of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics at Iowa State University. After moving to California, he joined Warthman Associates in Palo Alto where he did technical writing and applet programming for a variety of high-tech firms. Alan now writes documentation about the Java(tm) Development Kit for Sun Java Software.	[PENDING]
Java Native Interface	Beth Stearns is the president of Computer Ease Publishing, a computer consulting firm she founded in 1982. Her client list includes Sun Microsystems Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Xerox Corporation, among others. Her "Understanding EDT," a guide to Digital Equipment Corporation's text editor, has sold throughout the world. She received her B.S. degree from Cornell University and a master's degree from Adelphi University. Beth would also like to acknowledge Sheng Liang, architect of the JNI Specification, for his early collaboration on this trail and subsequent review, and Dan Sears for his review of this trail.	[PENDING]
RMI	Jim Waldo is a Senior Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems, where he leads a team developing a distributed programming infrastructure for Java. Before joining Sun's Java Software division, he was a Principal Investigator in Sun Labs, doing research into the areas of object-oriented programming and systems, distributed computing, and user environments. Jim is also on the faculty of Harvard University, where he teaches distributed computing in the department of computer science. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He also holds M.A. degrees in both linguistics and philosophy.	We'd like to thank Peter Jones for his contribution of the code to calculate pi and both Peter Jones and Jennifer McGinn for their detailed reviews and comments on this chapter.
RMI	Ann Wollrath is a Senior Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems where she is the architect and project lead of the Java Remote Method Invocation system. Previously during her tenure at Sun Microsystems Laboratories and at the MITRE Corporation, she researched reliable, large-scale distributed systems and parallel computation. Ann received an M.S. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and a B.S. in computer science from Merrimack College.	We'd like to thank Peter Jones for his contribution of the code to calculate pi and both Peter Jones and Jennifer McGinn for their detailed reviews and comments on this chapter.