James Duncan Davidson (born July 29, 1970 in Lubbock, Texas) is an American photographer and former software developer. While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems (1997–2001), Davidson created Tomcat, a Java‐based webserver application and the Ant Java‐based build tool.
He was raised in Oklahoma and Texas, and is currently self‐employed as both a software consultant and a photographer. He is a resident of Portland, Oregon.
James has in the recent past (2005–2006) turned his programming interests and attention in the direction of Ruby on Rails. In tandem with well‐known Rails guru Mike Clark, Davidson has designed and built some of the most complex and robust early Rails applications.
Starting in 2005, James' primary professional focus shifted to photography. He has served as the primary event photographer at several high-profile technology conferences. In February 2009, he served as a photographer at the TED conference.
He is co-founder and co-owner (with Greg Koenig) of Luma Labs, a small company in Portland, OR focused on making quality camera accessories.
Famous quotes containing the words james, duncan and/or davidson:
“Follow me if I advance
Kill me if I retreat
Avenge me if I die.”
—Mary Matalin, U.S. Republican political advisor, author, and James Carville b. 1946, U.S. Democratic political advisor, author. All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, epigraph (from a Vietnamese battle cry)
“Have you checked the children yet?”
—Fred Walton, U.S. screenwriter. Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley)
“If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behavior of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)