Jay McGavren was working on automation for a hotel services company when a colleague introduced him to Programming Perl (a.k.a. the Camel Book). It made him an instant Perl convert, as he liked actually writing code instead of waiting for a 10-person development team to configure a build system. It also gave him the crazy idea to write a technical book someday.

In 2007, with Perl sputtering, Jay was looking for a new interpreted language. With its strong object orientation, excellent library support, and incredible flexibility, Ruby won him over. He’s since used Ruby for two game libraries, for a generative art project, and as a Ruby on Rails freelancer. He’s been working in the online developer education space since 2011.

You can follow Jay on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jaymcgavren, or visit his personal website at http://jay.mcgavren.com.