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the authors

Authors of Head First Programming

Paul Barry

David Griffiths

Paul Barry recently worked out that he has David Griffiths began programming at age 12,
been programming for close to a quarter century, a when he saw a documentary on the work of Seymour
fact that came as a bit of a shock. In that time, Paul Papert. At age 15, he wrote an implementation of
has programmed in lots of different programming Papert’s computer language LOGO. After studying
languages, lived and worked in two countries on two Pure Mathematics at University, he began writing code
continents, got married, had three kids (well... his wife for computers and magazine articles for humans. He’s
Deirdre actually had them, but Paul did play his part), worked as an agile coach, a developer, and a garage
completed a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computing, written attendant, but not in that order. He can write code in
two other books, written a bunch of technical articles over 10 languages and prose in just one, and when not
for Linux Journal, and managed not to lose his hair... a writing, coding, or coaching, he spends much of his
situation that, sadly, may in fact be changing. spare time travelling with his lovely wife—and fellow
Head First author—Dawn.
When Paul first saw Head First HTML with CSS &
XHTML, he loved it so much he knew immediately that Before writing Head First Programming, he wrote another
the Head First approach would be a great way to teach book called Head First Rails, which is an excellent read
programming. He is only too delighted, together with and would make a thoughtful gift for any close friend or
David, to create this book in an attempt to prove his family member.
hunch correct.
You can follow him on Twitter at:
Paul’s day job is working as a lecturer at The Institute
of Technology, Carlow in Ireland. As part of the http://twitter.com/dgriffiths
Department of Computing & Networking, Paul gets
to spend his day exploring, learning, and teaching
cool programming technologies, which is his idea of
fun (and further proof that Paul probably needs to get
out more). Paul hopes his students think the stuff he
teaches is fun, too.
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