Appendix 3. About the Author

Wesley Chun was initiated into the world of computing in high school. There he learned BASIC and 6502 Assembly on Commodore PET/CBM systems, Pascal on the Apple IIe, and FORTRAN on punch cards. He also helped the journalism department convert from typewriters to CP/M-based Osborne 1s running MicroPro WordStar and served as a student-instructor teaching BASIC programming to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and their parents.

Wesley then went on to the University of California, Berkeley, as a California Alumni Scholar. He nearly completed a triple major, finally graduating with an A.B. in applied math (computer science) and a minor in music (classical piano). While at Cal he coded in Pascal, Logo, and C. One of his summer internships involved programming in a 4GL and writing an entire "Getting Started" user manual. Also at Cal, he took a course on tutoring undergraduates that featured videotape training and psychological counseling. Several years later at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Wesley continued his studies in computer science (networking) and taught C programming for UCSB Extension. A paper based on his master's thesis was nominated for the Best Paper award at the 29th HICSS conference and a later version appeared in the University of Singapore's Journal of High Performance Computing.

After graduation, Wesley went on to Sun Microsystems where he worked on the Solaris operating system. He also continued to teach for UC Extension, this time for the Santa Cruz campus in Silicon Valley, instructing courses in Unix and C (and later, Python). When the Internet finally went mainstream, he joined a start-up named Four11 (later acquired by Yahoo!) where he was exposed to Python. He was on the Yahoo!Mail development team, rearchitecting the original spellchecker and address book, and was also the lead engineer for Yahoo! People Search. After leaving Yahoo!, he wrote the first edition of this book, then traveled around the world. He then came back to do something (almost) completely different for Synarc: spinal fracture radiology software for doctors in a clinical trials setting. Then he went to IronPort to help keep spam and viruses out of your inbox.

Wesley is now an independent Python consultant and technical trainer (www.cyberwebconsulting.com). In his spare time, his non-computer-related hobbies include: bowling, basketball, bicycling, yoga, ultimate frisbee, playing poker online and with friends, traveling, playing the piano, and spending time with his wife and kids. He is a coordinator for the Silicon Valley-San Francisco Bay Area Python users group (www.baypiggies.net) and a volunteer for the Python Tutor mailing list. He is also responsible for creating and maintaining the online "Monster Discography" for musical artists, including, The Alan Parsons Project, Alan Parsons (solo band), Eric Woolfson (and his projects), and Andrew Powell and the Philharmonia Orchestra. (If you think you're a fan but don't have Freudiana, you had better find it.)