Philip Greenspun
Encyclopedia
Philip Greenspun is a semi-retired American
computer scientist
, educator, and early Internet
entrepreneur
who was a pioneer in developing online communities.
, and received an S.B.
in Mathematics
from MIT
in 1982. After working for Hewlett Packard Research Labs in Palo Alto
and Symbolics
, he became a founder of ICAD
, Inc. Greenspun returned to MIT to study electrical engineering
and computer science
, eventually receiving a Ph.D
.
Among software engineer
s, Greenspun is known for his Tenth Rule of Programming
: "Any sufficiently complicated C
or Fortran
program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug
-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp
."
In 1993, Greenspun founded photo.net, an online community for people helping each other to improve their photographic skills. He seeded the community with Travels with Samantha, a photo-illustrated account of a trip from Boston
to Alaska
and back. photo.net, having grown to 600,000 registered users, was acquired by NameMedia in 2007 for $6 million, according to documents filed in connection with a planned public offering of NameMedia shares (news story).
Greenspun released the software behind photo.net as a free open-source toolkit called the ArsDigita Community System
, built on top of the Oracle relational database management system
. He wrote several textbooks on developing Internet applications, including Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, SQL for Web Nerds, and Software Engineering for Internet Applications, the textbook for an MIT course. Greenspun started a company to sell support and service contracts for the toolkit, which remained free, and grew ArsDigita
to about $20 million in revenue before taking a venture capital
investment (story).
Greenspun was an early developer of database-backed Web sites, which became the dominant approach to engineering sites with user contributions, e.g., Amazon.com. Greenspun was a developer of one of the first Web-based electronic medical record systems (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC116301/ "Building national electronic medical record systems via the World Wide Web."). Greenspun's Oracle
-based community site LUSENET
was an important early host of free forums. In 1995, Greenspun was hired to lead development of Hearst Corporation's
Internet services, which included some early e-commerce
sites.
According to the FAA Airmen registry, Greenspun holds an Airline Transport Pilot License
and Flight Instructor certificates for both airplanes and helicopters, as well as type ratings for two turbojet-powered airplanes. Greenspun is listed as an instructor at East Coast Aero Club and was interviewed by NPR regarding the success of a Groupon
helicopter lesson offer ("Half-Off Cupcakes And More").
Greenspun and his co-founders started a non-profit foundation
that ran the ArsDigita Prize
, an award for young web developers, and the ArsDigita University
, a tuition-free one-year program teaching the core computer science curriculum, one course at a time.
Greenspun has taught electrical engineering and computer science at MIT ("Teaching Software Engineering"). One of Greenspun's most famous students is Randal Pinkett
, who built an online community for low-income housing residents in Greenspun's 6.171 Software Engineering for Internet Applications course. Pinkett went on to win NBC
TV show The Apprentice. In 2003, Greenspun helped teach a newly designed circuits and electronics course at MIT.
In 2007, Greenspun donated $20,000 to Wikimedia Foundation to start a fund for the payment of illustrators to supply illustrations for use on Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Greenspun is a volunteer for Angel Flight and, on December 6, 2010, assisted in the first nationally arranged kidney paired-donation in which kidneys were flown from Lebanon, New Hampshire to St. Louis and vice versa (source).
In January 2011, Greenspun taught an intensive RDBMS/SQL programming course at MIT using Google Docs to coordinate classroom instruction.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
, educator, and early Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
who was a pioneer in developing online communities.
Biography
Greenspun was born on September 28, 1963, grew up in Bethesda, MarylandBethesda, Maryland
Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...
, and received an S.B.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
from MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1982. After working for Hewlett Packard Research Labs in Palo Alto
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
and Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
, he became a founder of ICAD
ICAD
ICAD was a Knowledge-Based Engineering system that was based upon the Lisp programming language...
, Inc. Greenspun returned to MIT to study electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, eventually receiving a Ph.D
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
.
Among software engineer
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
s, Greenspun is known for his Tenth Rule of Programming
Greenspun's Tenth Rule
Greenspun's tenth rule of programming is an aphorism in computer programming and especially programming language circles that states:This expresses the opinion that the perceived flexibility and extensibility designed into the Lisp programming language includes all functionality that is...
: "Any sufficiently complicated C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
or Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...
."
In 1993, Greenspun founded photo.net, an online community for people helping each other to improve their photographic skills. He seeded the community with Travels with Samantha, a photo-illustrated account of a trip from Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
to Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and back. photo.net, having grown to 600,000 registered users, was acquired by NameMedia in 2007 for $6 million, according to documents filed in connection with a planned public offering of NameMedia shares (news story).
Greenspun released the software behind photo.net as a free open-source toolkit called the ArsDigita Community System
ArsDigita Community System
The ArsDigita Community System was an advanced Open Source toolkit for developing community web applications developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation...
, built on top of the Oracle relational database management system
Oracle database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
. He wrote several textbooks on developing Internet applications, including Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, SQL for Web Nerds, and Software Engineering for Internet Applications, the textbook for an MIT course. Greenspun started a company to sell support and service contracts for the toolkit, which remained free, and grew ArsDigita
ArsDigita
ArsDigita was a web development company cofounded by Philip Greenspun, Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Olin Shivers, Aure Prochazka, and Jin Choi and was started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1990s...
to about $20 million in revenue before taking a venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
investment (story).
Greenspun was an early developer of database-backed Web sites, which became the dominant approach to engineering sites with user contributions, e.g., Amazon.com. Greenspun was a developer of one of the first Web-based electronic medical record systems (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC116301/ "Building national electronic medical record systems via the World Wide Web."). Greenspun's Oracle
Oracle database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
-based community site LUSENET
LUSENET
LUSENET was a free public bulletin-board system active from 1995 to 2005.Created as an experiment by MIT computer scientist and early internet entrepreneur Philip Greenspun, the TCL-based system was named as a pun combination of USENET and luser...
was an important early host of free forums. In 1995, Greenspun was hired to lead development of Hearst Corporation's
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
Internet services, which included some early e-commerce
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online...
sites.
According to the FAA Airmen registry, Greenspun holds an Airline Transport Pilot License
Airline Transport Pilot License
The Airline Transport Pilot License , or in the United States of America, an Airline Transport Pilot Certificate is the highest level of aircraft pilot rating -- or license...
and Flight Instructor certificates for both airplanes and helicopters, as well as type ratings for two turbojet-powered airplanes. Greenspun is listed as an instructor at East Coast Aero Club and was interviewed by NPR regarding the success of a Groupon
Groupon
Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. Groupon was launched in November 2008, the first market for Groupon was Chicago, followed soon thereafter by Boston, New York City, and Toronto...
helicopter lesson offer ("Half-Off Cupcakes And More").
Greenspun and his co-founders started a non-profit foundation
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
that ran the ArsDigita Prize
ArsDigita Prize
The ArsDigita Prize, sponsored by ArsDigita and Philip Greenspun, was awarded annually in June 1999, 2000, and 2001 to young people who created "useful, educational, and collaborative" non-commercial Web sites.- The award :...
, an award for young web developers, and the ArsDigita University
ArsDigita University
ArsDigita University was a one-year, intensive post-baccalaureate program in Computer Science based on the undergraduate course of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It was financed and supported by the ArsDigita Foundation, a non-profit organization begun by ArsDigita Corporation...
, a tuition-free one-year program teaching the core computer science curriculum, one course at a time.
Greenspun has taught electrical engineering and computer science at MIT ("Teaching Software Engineering"). One of Greenspun's most famous students is Randal Pinkett
Randal Pinkett
Randal D. Pinkett is a business consultant who in 2005 was the winner of season four of the reality television show, The Apprentice...
, who built an online community for low-income housing residents in Greenspun's 6.171 Software Engineering for Internet Applications course. Pinkett went on to win NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
TV show The Apprentice. In 2003, Greenspun helped teach a newly designed circuits and electronics course at MIT.
In 2007, Greenspun donated $20,000 to Wikimedia Foundation to start a fund for the payment of illustrators to supply illustrations for use on Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Greenspun is a volunteer for Angel Flight and, on December 6, 2010, assisted in the first nationally arranged kidney paired-donation in which kidneys were flown from Lebanon, New Hampshire to St. Louis and vice versa (source).
In January 2011, Greenspun taught an intensive RDBMS/SQL programming course at MIT using Google Docs to coordinate classroom instruction.
External links
- Philip Greenspun's homepage
- Philip Greenspun's weblog
- The photo.net site
- E-Mail Alerts Show Growing Potential
- audio interview with Philip Greenspun at IT Conversations
- early work in internet application development
- "Software Engineering for Web Applications" course given at Arsdigita University