# Dave Thomas ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-02-04 Dave Thomas.jpg|400]] Dave Thomas is a British-American programmer and author, best known for co-writing *The Pragmatic Programmer* with Andy Hunt. He was one of the 17 original signatories of the [[Agile Manifesto]] and co-founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company. Thomas is known for coining the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle and for his advocacy of Ruby and Elixir programming languages. ## Key Contributions - **The Pragmatic Programmer**: Co-authored influential book with Andy Hunt (1999) - **[[Agile Manifesto]]**: Co-author of the founding document - **DRY Principle**: Coined "Don't Repeat Yourself" - **Pragmatic Bookshelf**: Co-founded technical publishing company - **Ruby Advocacy**: Helped popularize Ruby in the West ## Notable Books - *The Pragmatic Programmer* (1999, 2019 20th Anniversary Edition) - *Programming Ruby* (2000) - "The Pickaxe Book" - *Programming Elixir* (2014) - *Agile Web Development with Rails* (2005) ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Thomas_(programmer) - https://pragdave.me ## Related - [[Agile Manifesto]] - [[Kent Beck]] - [[Ward Cunningham]] ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[Dave Thomas]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/book AND [[Dave Thomas]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC -->