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Allen Holub

Expert in:

The Design, Architecture, and Implementation of Computer Programs.
Design & Process Training & Mentoring
Technical Due Diligence

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Allen's primary focus in the last few years has been on helping companies be successful in their software-developmentefforts (and in a few cases, actually building the software).His motivation is frustration; having seen too manycompanies fail outright or lose millions though failedsoftware efforts.The frustration comes from knowing that these failures areeasily avoidable when the company has even a little help.

Having worked as a CTO,software architect(in the sense of a designer of software), programmer, educator,and author specializing in object-oriented design and languages(including Java and C++), Allen is in a unique position toassess and improveboth the software itself and the software-development process.He's skilled at helping executives, managers, and programmersget and stay on track.

Here'sAllen's detailed C.V.in .pdf format.

Technical Background

Allen has worked in the computer field since 1979—as an independentconsultant since 1983.He started out as a hardware engineer, developing robotics control systems—hisfirst software projects were device drivers for his own boards—but the software eventuallypreempted the hardware. He moved into software by developing compilers and operating systems, andis now an acknowledged expert in OO design and both systems and application development.His software projects have included:

• Various custom device drivers.
• A real-time operating-system kernel.
• A full-fledged, but simple, disk operating system.
• Various compilers for proprietary languages.
• An open-source word-processing system.
• An UNIX-style C shell for Microsoft operating systems.
• Many compilers (his C compiler is documented in his bookCompiler Design in C).
• Implementations of the UNIX lex and yacc compiler-compiler utilities.
• A Java Threading package to augment the language-level threading support.
• Various client-side application programs.
• Various web applications.

Allen has been an active participant in the open-source community,publishing large amounts of useful source code in books and in the various magazines to whichhe's contributed over the years.Much of hispublished code has found its way into commercial products such as the Rogue Wave C++ tool kitand the libraries accompanying the Borland C and C++ compilers.

Allen was an early adopter of Java—programmingin it since 1995 (the language was released by SUN in March of that year).Before that, Allen worked primarily in C++ (since 1991), C (since 1980), and variousother obscure and now-irrelevant languages(Smalltalk; FORTAN; PL/M; PL/1; Pascal; Modula;8080, 8085, 68000, and TI 9900 assembler; and the like.)

Allen is one of the foremost experts in Object-oriented Design techniques.He has been a strong public advocate of the design process, in both hispublic writings and in his teaching work.Over the years, he's helped thousands of programmers work more effectively by showing them "how it's done."An important part of his practice involvestraining, mentoring, and guidance to companieswho wish to apply Object-Oriented design techniquesand processes to computer-software development. These sort oftechnology-support services range from on-siteinstruction to regular design and code review.

Allen has provided consulting and educational servicesto many companies, bothin the San Francisco Bay Area, across the country, and internationally.

Teaching

Allen is a highly regarded educator. He regularly teaches in-house classes forindividual companies, and has taughtfor the University of California, Berkeley, Extension since 1982.He's taught various topics, includingObject-Oriented Analysis and Design, Java,C++, C, Compiler Design, Win32 Systems Programming,and Microsoft Foundation Class Programming.He regularly receives accolades from his students,who represent most of the major software companies in the Bay Area.

Allen is a regular presenter at theSoftware Developmentconferences, and presented at Sun'sJavaOne conference in 1999(covering the Java threading model).His Software-Development presentationsinclude the Java VM and security model and OO architectures for developing user interfaces.

Writing

Allen is a Contributing Editor for the on-line magazinesJavaWorld (Java Toolbox)andSD Times (Java Watch).He wrote theOO Design Process columnforIBM DeveloperWorksand hasmoderated several public forums (including theITworld Programming Theory & Practice Forum).His articleshave championed the OO-design process, and have opened many readers eyes to whatthe term "object oriented" really means.Allen was a contributing editor forDr. Dobb's Journal,Dr. Dobb's Sourcebook,andProgrammer's Journal.His popular "C Chest" column, which appeared monthly inDr. Dobb's Journal from 1983 to 1987, provided manypeople with their first introduction to C.Allen has also written forMicrosoft Systems Journal,Programmers Journal,BYTE.Windows Tech Journal,Mac Tech Journal,C Gazetteand others.

• Go to index of the Allen's JavaWorld and IBM columns.
• Go to a complete list of Allen's published work.

Allen's many published books include:

• Holub on Patterns: Learning Design Patterns by Looking at Code(Apress, 2004).This book is unique in the industry in that it presents the complete source code fortwo nontrivial programs (a SQL interpreter and a Game-of-Life implementation) and analyzes themin depth in terms of the design patterns used in the implementation.It is the only that shows you how the design patterns actually appear in real code.
• Taming Java Threads.(Apress, 2000).This book anthologizes his popular nine-partJava-threading series, originally published inJavaWorld,adding considerable material to the original articles.It covers all the threading traps and pitfalls found in Java,including the platform-dependence issues, and presents a production-qualitythreading package that you can use to solve those problem.Object-oriented threading architectures are also discussed.
• Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot(McGraw-Hill, 1995): A collection of rules of thumb for C++programming. Following these rules helps the reader bothwrite better code and head off programming errors beforethey happen. The rules are based on practical programmingexperience in C++.
• C+C++: Programming With Objects in C and C++(McGraw-Hill, 1992): An introduction to C++ for professionalC programmers, this book takes the unique approach ofpresenting object-oriented concepts in the context of Cbefore introducing C++. Covers pitfalls of the languageand presents more practical-programming advice than mostbooks of this sort.
• Compiler Design in C (Prentice Hall, 1990):Considered by many to be the definitive practical introductionto compiler design, this book covers all the relevant theory,but in the context of real programs: fully functional versionsof the UNIX lex and yacc utilities are presented, as is thecomplete source code for a C compiler. This book is still astrong seller, six years after it’s first printing.
• The C Companion (Prentice Hall, 1987): Eachchapter covers a different subject, both interesting anduseful to the C programmer, but not covered in most books onC programming.
• The C Chest and other C Treasures(M&T Books, 1987):reprints 21 of the C-Chest columns that Allen wrote for Dr. Dobb's Journal.
• On Command: Writing a UNIX-like Shell for MS-DOS(M&T Books, 1986):The complete source code for a UNIXC-Shell implementation (which is much more powerful thanMicrosoft’s COMMAND.COM) that ran under MS-DOS. One of thefirst books to show how to implement useful UNIX utilitiesin the MSDOS environment.
• Dr. Dobb's Toolbook of C(M&T Books, 1986):contains reprints of two of Allen's early articles forDr. Dobb's Journal: "Getargs: A Command-Line Argument Processor"and"Grep.c: A Generalized Regular-Expression Parser in C."

Many of his books appear in Japanese, German, and Russiantranslation.

Education, Etc.

Allen holds an Bachelor of Arts degrees in Computer Science and Medieval-European History (or "mid-evil" history, as hisD&B rating used to say) from the University of California, Berkeley.Allen is an accomplished composer and musician (keyboards and percussion, styles ranging from "minimalism" to jazz/funk),He's also an oil painter (post impressionist), and an avid pilot (instrument-rated commercial).

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