Bryan O'Sullivan
John Goerzen
John Goerzen is an American hacker and author. He has written a number of realworld
Haskell libraries and applications, including the HDBC database interface, the
ConfigFile configuration file interface, a podcast downloader, and various other libraries
relating to networks, parsing, logging, and POSIX code. John has been a developer
for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system project for over 10 years and maintains
numerous Haskell libraries and code for Debian. He also served as president of Software
in the Public Interest, Inc., the legal parent organization of Debian. John lives in rural
Kansas with his wife and son, where he enjoys photography and geocaching.
Don Stewart
Don Stewart is an Australian hacker based in Portland, Oregon. Don has been involved
in a diverse range of Haskell projects, including practical libraries, such as Data.Byte-
String and Data.Binary, as well as applying the Haskell philosophy to real-world applications,
including compilers, linkers, text editors, network servers, and systems
software. His recent work has focused on optimizing Haskell for high-performance
scenarios, using techniques from term rewriting.
The animal on the cover of Real World Haskell is a rhinoceros beetle, a species of scarab
beetle. Relative to their size, rhinoceros beetles are among the strongest animals on the
planet. They can lift up to 850 times their own weight. The average rhino beetle found
in the U.S. is about an inch long, but they can grow as long as seven inches.
Rhino beetles have horns on their heads, resembling that of the rhinoceros, hence the
name. The size of their horns is related to how much nutrition they had in larva. In
some species, the horns are longer than the bodies, and they can grow as many as four
or five horns. They use the horns for digging, as well as for fighting for territory and
mates.
Rhino beetles thrive on sap and rotting fruit, specifically bananas, apples, and oranges.
Their larvae, which takes between 3–5 years to mature, eat decaying wood, compost,
and dead leaves—a kind of recycling for the environment.