Doug Bierer has been hooked on computers since his first program, written on a DEC PDP-8, in 1971. In his wide-ranging career, Doug has been a professional contract programmer since 1978, having written applications in BASIC, PL/I, assembler, FORTH, C, C++, dBase/FoxBase/Clipper, Pascal, Perl, Java, Python and PHP. He deployed his first website in 1993 while living in San Francisco. He speaks four languages, has traveled extensively and now resides in Thailand. He also spent some years doing system administration and TCP/IP networking. Some of his technical works include PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks and Best Practices PHP 7 Programming Cookbook and Learning MongoDB 4.x (Packt), as well as Learning PHP and MySQL, Learning PHP Security and Learning Doctrine (O'Reilly Media).

His fictional works include The End, And Then? and Further Indications.

His most current authoring project is a book PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks and Best Practices, scheduled to be published by Packt July 2021.

He founded unlikelysource.com in April 2008.

A self-described Slow Tourist, and certified Digital Nomad, Doug has lived in ...

  • Rochester (NY USA)
  • Tours (France)
  • San Francisco Bay Area (California USA)
  • Utrecht (the Netherlands)
  • Wokingham (England)
  • Gothenburg (Sweden)
  • Aberdeen (Scotland)

... and now Surin (Thailand).

The reason why he's in Thailand:


Zend Certifications

Fun Facts About Doug

  • The first computer he bought was a PAIA P4700J that he built himself. Although a starving student at the time, he won a mini-grant from the State University of Potsdam, NY for an IBM 360/370 mainframe program, written in PL/I, that analyzed French poetry.
  • His first assembler language was for the Motorola 6809 processor, learned on a Radio Shack Color Computer
  • He used to bicycle to an early job on the night shift of a nursing home with a Commodore 64 and green-screen monitor in his back pack
  • One of his early commercial contracts was writing a human resources report in dBase III for the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). The manager was unable to tell him what was supposed to go into the report. The only person who knew had been reassigned to Alaska.
  • Doug has been a member of 7 different rock bands, 4 different jazz bands, plays the trombone, bass guitar and keyboards, and composes all of his own music.
  • He's lived in 14 different cities on three different continents and speaks three languages fluently, with a smattering of Spanish, Dutch and German.
  • He currently lives in Thailand with his wife Fon, three kids, one mother-in-law, two dogs, and five cats.