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 Gilad Bracha Michael Martak Beth Stearns
Jennifer Ball Maydene Fisher Ray Ortigas Jim Waldo
Cynthia Bloch Dale Green Monica Pawlan Ann Wollrath
Joshua Bloch Scott A. Hommel Andy Quinn
Stephanie Bodoff Jim Inscore Alan Sommerer

Links to Author's Work Bio

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.

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. She holds a masters degree in Interdisciplinary Computer Science from Mills College.

Servlets Stephanie Bodoff is a staff writer at Sun Microsystems. She has been involved with object-oriented enterprise software since graduating from Columbia University with an M.S. in electrical engineering. For several years she worked as a software engineer on distributed computing and telecommunications systems and object-oriented software development methods. For the past 4 years Stephanie has concentrated on technical writing, documenting object-oriented databases, application servers, and enterprise application development methods. She is a co-author of Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition and Object-Oriented Software Development: The Fusion Method.

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.

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.

Generics Gilad Bracha is a computational theologist at Sun Microsystems, co-author and maintainer of the Java Language Specification, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He holds a B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

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.

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.

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.

Using the BeanContext API Scott A. Hommel is a technical writer on staff at Sun Microsystems, where he documents the Java(TM) 2 SDK Core API. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Scott worked as a Java programmer/analyst for Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. in Burlington, VT. His main interests are in the areas of JavaBeans, networking, and security.

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.

Full-Screen Exclusive Mode API Michael Martak Michael Martak is a software engineer on the AWT core team at Sun Microsystems. Some of his contributions to the Java 2 SDK include the JAWT native drawing interface, the headless Java API, and full-screen API. Outside of Sun, Michael's name can be found on the development credits for SimCity 3000 by Electronic Arts among many other projects. Michael has a B.S. in computer science from Boston University.

Your First Cup of Java Ray Ortigas was a summer intern at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division. He's currently in the last year of a B.Sc. in computer science at the University of Toronto in Canada. Ray tries to pay off his tuition, rent and ever-increasing credit card bills by working part-time as a software developer and teaching assistant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Deborah Adair	Gilad Bracha	Michael Martak	Beth Stearns
Jennifer Ball	Maydene Fisher	Ray Ortigas	Jim Waldo
Cynthia Bloch	Dale Green	Monica Pawlan	Ann Wollrath
Joshua Bloch	Scott A. Hommel	Andy Quinn
Stephanie Bodoff	Jim Inscore	Alan Sommerer

Links to Author's Work	Bio
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.
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. She holds a masters degree in Interdisciplinary Computer Science from Mills College.
Servlets	Stephanie Bodoff is a staff writer at Sun Microsystems. She has been involved with object-oriented enterprise software since graduating from Columbia University with an M.S. in electrical engineering. For several years she worked as a software engineer on distributed computing and telecommunications systems and object-oriented software development methods. For the past 4 years Stephanie has concentrated on technical writing, documenting object-oriented databases, application servers, and enterprise application development methods. She is a co-author of Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition and Object-Oriented Software Development: The Fusion Method.
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.
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.
Generics	Gilad Bracha is a computational theologist at Sun Microsystems, co-author and maintainer of the Java Language Specification, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He holds a B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.
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.
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.
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.
Using the BeanContext API	Scott A. Hommel is a technical writer on staff at Sun Microsystems, where he documents the Java(TM) 2 SDK Core API. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Scott worked as a Java programmer/analyst for Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. in Burlington, VT. His main interests are in the areas of JavaBeans, networking, and security.
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.
Full-Screen Exclusive Mode API	Michael Martak Michael Martak is a software engineer on the AWT core team at Sun Microsystems. Some of his contributions to the Java 2 SDK include the JAWT native drawing interface, the headless Java API, and full-screen API. Outside of Sun, Michael's name can be found on the development credits for SimCity 3000 by Electronic Arts among many other projects. Michael has a B.S. in computer science from Boston University.
Your First Cup of Java	Ray Ortigas was a summer intern at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division. He's currently in the last year of a B.Sc. in computer science at the University of Toronto in Canada. Ray tries to pay off his tuition, rent and ever-increasing credit card bills by working part-time as a software developer and teaching assistant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.