Randal L. Schwartz (born November 22, 1961), also known asmerlyn, is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. He has written several books on thePerl programming language, and plays a promotional role within the Perl community. He was a co-host ofFLOSS Weekly.
In 1995, while working as a consultant forIntel, he cracked a number of passwords on the company's systems. He was convicted of hacking, sentenced to five years probation, and fined. The conviction was expunged in 2007.
Schwartz is the co-author of several widely used books aboutPerl, a programming language, and has written regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines, includingUNIX Review,Web Techniques, and thePerl Journal. He popularized theJust another Perl hacker signature programs. He is a founding board member of thePerl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. He was a member of the Squeak Oversight Board,[1] which oversees theSqueak programming language.
He has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. since 1985. After joining as co-host ofFLOSS Weekly, afree software/open source (FLOSS) themedpodcast in 2007, he assumed the role of host in 2010 until May 2020. He has done voice work forStarShipSofa, a science-fiction podcast.
Schwartz's name is also associated with theSchwartzian transform, analgorithm to efficiently sort a list according to a computation, without repeating the computation many times for each element of the list. He also coined the namespaceship operator for use in his teaching, because it reminded him of the spaceship in an HPBASICStar Trek game.[2]
Schwartz is a 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—includingDr. 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 2011OSCON conference[10] and a keynote speaker at the 2010Texas LinuxFest conference.[11]
His various books have been met with positive reviews.[12][13]
In July 1995, Schwartz was prosecuted in the case ofState of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz, which dealt with compromised computer security during his time as a system administrator forIntel. In the process of performingpenetration 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 officialexpungement, and he is legally no longer a felon.[16][17]
