Roedy Green

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Roedy Green (born Munroe Frederic Compton Green on February 4, 1948) is a Canadian programmer, independent computer consultant, and activist. He is well-known on the Internet for his Java & Internet Glossary, and his popular essay How to Write Unmaintainable Code.

Roedy began his programming career in 1963 (at the then unheard-of age of 15), writing Fortran timetable scheduling software for the West Vancouver Secondary School.

In August 1969, he came out as gay. In 1971, based on his experiences, he self-published the booklet "A Guide For The Naive Homosexual" (also known as "the blurb"), and became involved in the founding of the Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE), later serving as its second chairman (August 1971 to July 1972).

In 1979, he worked with John C. Lilly on Project JANUS, writing hardware interface software and a dolphin-controlled Etch-A-Sketch. Later, as part of volunteer work for The Hunger Project, he created the programming language Abundance.

Roedy contracted HIV in 1985, and maintains a wide variety of resources on his website for people seeking more information about this disease.