Randal L. Schwartz

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Randal L. Schwartz
Randal Schwartz headshot by Chris Marquardt.png
Born (1961-11-22) November 22, 1961 (age 62)
Residence Portland, Oregon
Nationality American
Other names merlyn (internet handle)
Occupation Programmer, Author, Instructor
Employer Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.
Known for Schwartzian transform
Website www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/

Randal L. Schwartz (born November 22, 1961), also known as merlyn, is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant.

Career

Schwartz is the co-author of several widely used books about Perl, a programming language, and has written regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines, including UNIX Review, Web Techniques, and the Perl Journal. He popularized the Just another Perl hacker signature programs. He is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. He was a member of the Squeak Oversight Board,[1] which oversees the Squeak programming language.

He has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. since 1985. After joining as co-host of FLOSS Weekly, a free software/open source (FLOSS) themed podcast in 2007, he assumed the role of host in 2010. He has done voice work for StarShipSofa, a science-fiction podcast.

Schwartz's name is also associated with the Schwartzian transform, an algorithm to efficiently sort a list according to a computation, without repeating the computation many times for each element of the list. He also originated the name spaceship operator for use in his teaching, because it reminded him of the spaceship in an HP BASIC Star Trek game.[2]

Schwartz is an influential member of the F/OSS community, and has been named a "Perl Expert" and interviewed by numerous outlets – to discuss his views on Perl, Ruby, Smalltalk and other topics – including Dr. Dobb's,[3] Paul dot Com Security TV,[4] The Command Line,[5] PerlCast,[6] FLOSS Weekly,[7] ONLamp.com,[8] and InfoQ.[9] Schwartz was also a speaker at the 2011 OSCON conference[10] and a keynote speaker at the 2010 Texas LinuxFest conference.[11]

His various books have been met with positive reviews.[12][13]

Schwartz giving a talk on FISL 16

Intel case

In July 1995, Schwartz was prosecuted in the case of State of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz, which dealt with compromised computer security during his time as a system administrator for Intel. In the process of performing penetration testing, he cracked a number of passwords on Intel's systems.[14][15] Schwartz was originally convicted on three felony counts, with one reduced to a misdemeanor, but on February 1, 2007 his arrest and conviction records were sealed through an official expungement and he is legally no longer a felon.[16][17]

Bibliography

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. Pacenka, Steve (April 15, 1996)."Report of Detective P. Lazenby" (archive). (Case main)
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. Pacenka, Steve (April 15, 1996). State of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz case summary (archive). LightLink.com. (Case main).
  18. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links