Dave Thomas
@pragdave
About Me
I’m a Brit who has lived in the US for the last 30 years. I’ve worked for startups (back then we called them sweatshops) and in the “special projects” group of a computer manufacturer, but for most of my career I worked for myself.
I co-owned a small software house in the UK, specializing in bespoke software for the financial services industry along with lower-level communications projects.
After moving to the US, I freelanced for a while. During that time, I met Andy Hunt, and we worked on a number of challenging projects together.
Pragmatic Programmer
In the late 1990s we wrote the first edition of The Pragmatic Programmer, which ended up becoming one of the best selling books in the industry. A few years back we released an updated 20th Anniversary Edition.
Manifesto
In 2001 I was invited to participate in the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (the “we value A over B” idea came from Martin Fowler and me brainstorming over lunch). I am still incredibly proud of that document, and the impact it has had on the industry. At the same time, I’m distressed by the way those original four values have been co-opted and twisted to justify all manner of bad behavior and dodgy products.
Ruby
I came across Ruby in comp.lang.misc (ask your parents) in 1998 and fell in love. After finishing The Pragmatic Programmer, I wrote Programming Ruby (the Pickaxe book) to introduce Ruby to the world. I backported all the library documentation from the book into the Ruby source as comments, and wrote the RDoc utility to extract and format it. I spent the next decade evangelising Ruby around the world.
The Bookshelf
Encouraged by the success of the first two books, Andy and I formed The Pragmatic Bookshelf and started invited friends to write for us. The Bookshelf has published almost 800 titles, and has sold over 3 million books.
Elixir
I worked with Joe Armstrong (one of the creators of Erlang) when he wrote Programming Erlang, so I was naturally interested when Elixir came along. Interest turned to love, and I wrote Programming Elixir to help others discover this amazing language.
simplicity
My latest book, simplicity, is my response to the ridiculous complexity that has crept into our processes, tools, and programming. It’s a backdoor attempt to reclaim the original spirit of agility, with short feedback loops helping developers to maintain awareness of the big picture, and not getting sucked in to trying yet one more new framework, library, or complicated algorithm.
Consulting
I have been consulting for most of my career. In the 15 years leading up to the Bookshelf I did it exclusively; after that when time permitted. Now I’m back to doing it almost full time. There are more details on my consulting page.
Speaking
In the last 25 years I’ve given over 400 keynotes and talks at companies, conferences, workshops, and meetups around the world. I love to engage with people, and I love to share my experiences, insights, and the occasional contrary viewpoint. I want people to leave my talks inspired to think differently about what they do, and energized to take action. See some past talks or contact me to discuss your event.
