Ray Lischner

All the world is paged,
And all the men and women merely programs:
They have their exits and their segfaults;
And one man in his time plays many games,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the newbie,
Mewling and puking in BASIC terms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his packages,
And JavaServer Faces, creeping like snail
Downloading from the web. And then the l0v3r,
Sighing like heat sink fan, with an unmerged commit
Made to his github project. Then a hacker,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like a guru,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the flamebait reputation
Even on lkml. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with cappuccino drowned,
With eyes severe and beard of two days’ cut,
Full of wise saws and modern design patterns;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and sandal’d pantaloon,
With bifocals on nose and balding pate,
His COBOL code, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big noisy voice,
Turning again toward childish errors, buffer
Overruns in his code. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans mouse, sans keyboard, sans debugger, sans everything.

By William Shakespeare, edited by Ray Lischner

Ray started writing programs before he had access to a computer, and over the subsequent three decades, he progressed steadily through the ages of programming. He currently lives with his wife, children, and four-terabyte MythTV server in Maryland, where he does his best to retard the inexorable descent into the seventh age.

Ray is the award-winning author of several books on computer programming, such as Exploring C++ 11, C++ in a Nutshell, and Delphi in a Nutshell, as well as Shakespeare for Dummies and other books. In 1994, Ray founded Tempest Software as a way to escape the corporate rat race. Apparently, however, you can take the rat out of the race, but you can't take the race out of the rat, at least not this rat. So Ray once again slaves for his wages, hunkered over a terminal, hacking away at code. His current employer is Proteus Technologies.

Outside of work, Ray occupies himself by caring for his two charming children, Arthur and Arden, and his wonderful wife, Cheryl.

In the distant past, Ray's fading memory tells him that he received a Master of Science degree in computer science in 2001 at Oregon State University, where he also taught computer science. As an instructor at Oregon State, Ray pioneered a number of innovative teaching techniques. His approach to structured labs for introductory programming courses was presented at the ACM SIGCSE conference in 2001. You can also read about Collaborative Learning Lite, his lecture technique that turns large lectures into small-group interactive sessions.

Reaching farther back into the past, Ray worked as a software developer at large and small companies on both coasts of the United States, and points in between. His expertise spans a broad range of languages (C++, Java, C, Delphi, Perl, FORTRAN, Pascal, PL/I, Smalltalk, Haskell, etc.), and systems (Linux, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, VAX/VMS, Wang VS, Data General AOS/VS, etc.).

Ray has been writing programs and about programming for over three decades. He started his career after graduating from Caltech in 1984, with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science.

Terry Wright, Scott Mayo, and Ray are the inventors of an intermediate spreadsheet structure, patent number 5,055,998. He did this work at Wang Laboratories.