## About the author

John Walker founded Autodesk, Inc. in 1982, was its president through 1986 and chairman until 1988.

Autodesk (ADSK-NASDAQ), one of the five largest personal computer software companies, has become a leader in the computer aided design industry; its first product, AutoCAD, is the de facto worldwide standard for computer aided design and drafting.

John Walker is co-author of AutoCAD and other Autodesk products, including AutoSketch, AutoShade, and Cellular Automata Laboratory. He is also author of various public domain programs including Home Planet, Moontool; Moontool for Windows; Speak Freely for Unix; CODEGROUP; STEGO; SETTIME; XD; BGET; ATLAST; DICTOOL; PSTAMPR; RANDOM; DIESEL; SMARTALLOC; and the PBMPLUS utilities ppmforge, pgmcrater, sldtoppm, and ppmtoacad, all of which may be downloaded from his home page. . He has been recognised in Scientific American as having created, in 1975, the first (benign) computer virus. He was smeared by Wall Street Journal hatchetman G. P. Zachary in a front-page profile on May 28, 1992, and in reply produced and directed the video Reporter At Work, offering unique uncut coverage of a high-stakes boardroom confrontation between an entrepreneur and a reporter sent to ruin him.

Walker's first book, The Autodesk File, was published in 1989 by New Riders Publishing. It chronicles Autodesk's growth from $60,000 pooled by a bunch of programmers to a billion dollar company in less than eight years. The fourth edition of The Autodesk File, updated through the end of 1993, is available online.

His second book, The Hacker's Diet: How To Lose Weight and Hair Through Stress and Poor Nutrition is also available on the Web:

For access to all of Walker's public domain software and writings, visit his home page.

April, 1996 -- February, 2003
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