John Walker (programmer)

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John Walker is a computer programmer and the founder of the CAD software company Autodesk, and co-author of AutoCAD.

Before Autodesk, John founded a hardware integration manufacturing company called Marinchip. Among other things, Marinchip pioneered the translation of numerous computer language compilers to Intel platforms.

John Walker now engages in projects at Fourmilab, in Switzerland, including a hardware random number generator called HotBits and his Earth and Moon viewer. John is also known for his efforts in the 196 Palindrome Quest, by taking it to 1,000,000 digits.

Besides programming, John Walker is a social advocate who has written many articles, including a well-known one about Internet censorship called The Digital Imprimatur. He is also known for his book The Hacker's Diet, a guide to approaching weight loss "as an engineering problem."

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