The Coder Part of Me

On the main page of my website, I identify myself as a Coder, among the three persons that I've said I am. Yet, as I've featured all my fictional works on the site, I realized there isn't any mention of coding or code samples, or technical work, which I've been doing over the last quarter century in Silicon Valley. It's as if I'm somewhat embarrassed by the output of coding, programming guides, reference, SDKs and other guides that I've produced. That's not right. The Coding Work isn't a stepchild of writing, a kind of black sheep in the family, there to serve my corporate overlords, not to be mentioned in polite company, whispered not spoken, as it brings home the bacon. Which it does.

Besides, how did a literature major from Dartmouth, a philosophy student at the University of Zurich, and a fellow working on a Ph.D in comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, ever get to write code, reams and streams of guides, tutorials and complex sets of technical documentation, and in the process, interestingly enough, happen to learn C, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C and other programming languages? What gives, my friend?

The answer is at once simple and complex: on one level, I took the time to learn how to code, build sample apps, and write about them, and on another level, I followed my instincts, which told me that I enjoyed doing this, liked the results, dug them, had fun with it, and truly savored the interactions and friendships with the people at Apple and the other companies I worked at. All of that kept me juggling the writing of fiction with technical stuff, a kind of left-brain, right-brain dance, which I still do even to this day.

The following is by no means complete, just a sampling of work from my days at Apple Inc, 1993-2010:

• Collection View Programming Guide For Mac OS X and iOS (42 pp) 

• QTKit Programming Guide (114 pp) 

• QTKit Application Programming Guide (66 pp) 

• QTKit Capture Programming Guide (54 pp) 

• iWork Programming Guide (55 pp) 

• QuickTime 6 Developer Guide (240 pp)

• iSight Programming Guide (16 pp) 

• Audio and MIDI Developer Guide for Mac OS X (116 pp) 

• Web Services Guide (56 pp) 

• QuickTime Music Architecture Guide (137 pp) 

• QuickTime VBR Audio Guide (8 pp) 

• QuickTime Interactive Movies Programming Guide (304 pp) 

• QuickTime File Format Specification (310 pp) 

• QTKit Objective-C Reference (317 pp) 

• QuickTime Import/Export Reference (135 pp) 

• QuickTime C Reference (2700+ C function calls, major contributions to 3300 pp) 

• QuickTime Media Types and Data Handlers (78 pp) 

• QTKit Application Tutorial (70 pp) 

• QTKitPlayer for Mac OS X (sample code) 

• QTKitCapture for Mac OS X and iOs (sample code) 

• MyMediaPlayer for Mac OS X and iOS (sample code) 

• QuickTime for Java:  A Developer Reference, 1st edition (655 pp) - co-author 

• QuickTime for Java:  A Multimedia Programming Guide, 2nd edition (754 pp) - primary author 

• Inside QuickTime VR (272 pp) - primary author 

• FileMaker Pro 3 for Dummies, IDG publisher (384 pp) - author 

• FileMaker Pro 4 for Dummies, IDG publisher (387 pp) - author 

• SK8 Programming Guide (325 pp) - co-author