Gaston C. Hillar is Italian and has been working with computers since he was 8 years old. Gaston has a bachelor's degree in computer science (graduated with honors) and an MBA. He is the CTO of Mapgenix, a freelance author, and a speaker. He has been a senior contributing editor at Dr. Dobb's and has written more than a hundred articles on software development topics. He has received the prestigious Intel® Black Belt Software Developer award eight times. He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his two sons, Kevin and Brandon.