Steve Gibson (computer programmer)

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 207.67.132.209 (talk) at 17:50, 6 June 2005 (Bit on SpinRite, and Gibson's advocacy of Assembly Language Programming). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
For other people named Steve Gibson see Steve Gibson (disambiguation)

Steve Gibson (b. March 1955) is a computer engineer and journalist based in Laguna Hills, California. Gibson has had a long career in the technology field starting in his teen years. He began in hardware projects but moved more towards software development in the 1980s. Gibson founded Gibson Research Corporation in 1985, and is currently its primary employee. Gibson is also a contributing editor to InfoWorld magazine.

In the 1980's his SpinRite program optimized the efficiency of hard disks. SpinRite has evolved to this time 2005into a data loss / data recovery utility.

Gibson is an advocate of assembly language programming, and prides himself with writing whole applications exclusively in assemly language. He is one of several advocates of optimizing computer programs and reducing the size of their executables. Programs written in assembly language run much faster than counterparts written in other languages.

Gibson has garnered criticism for certain writings on computer security which allegedly do no more than spread fear. He has also been accused of shameless self-promotion, and has oft been likened to a snake oil merchant. These accusations notwithstanding, he has developed and distributed (for free) a number of useful security tools, including the popular ShieldsUp port-scanning site. His writings also provide something of a glimpse into the world of hackers and crackers, of which he counts himself one of the former.