About John Gough

K John Gough

Compiler Writer, Academic, Bicycle racer. Click here to mail to john.

As a compiler writer John is best known for his work on Pascal-family languages, particularly Modula-2. Most of his compilers in the last ten years or so have been released under the Gardens Point name. Gardens Point Modula-2 (gpm) was produced in the 1990s for most computer architectures. QUT owns the rights to these compilers. Most versions were only available commercially, but gpm is still available as freeware on Linux and FreeBSD platforms. If QUT agrees, maybe the Solaris version will become freeware as well. John’s current compiler is called Gardens Point Component Pascal (gpcp). Component Pascal is an object oriented Pascal dialect, most directly comparable with Oberon-2. gpcp produces code for Microsoft’s .NET platform, and also for the Java Virtual Machine. gpcp is not only freeware, it is open source.

As an academic, John works for the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where he has been Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology since 1996. Here is a link to his academic home page. He has published on compilation, debugging, software engineering and reverse compilation. He still has a soft spot for one of his previous books. Click here for the cover, and here for the publication details. It is now out of print, unfortunately.

As a bicycle racer, John competes in state and national level masters events on the road, and also occasionally on the track. He rides a Litespeed titanium bike for road races, and a Look carbon-fiber time-trial bike against the clock. On the track, he rides a steel-framed bike of unknown provenance.

Click here for more cycling photos.

History… John used to race automobiles, and was a troublesome advocate of free speech. Here is a racing picture from about 1970, and a free-speech one from 1968.