Hillar, Gastón C.: - Gaston C. Hillar is Italian and has been working with computers since he was 8 years old. In the early 80s, he began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers. Gaston has a bachelor's degree in computer science (he graduated with honors). He also holds an MBA (he graduated with an outstanding thesis). At present, Gaston is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author who is always looking for new adventures around the world. He was 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(R) Black Belt Software Developer award eight times. He has written many articles about Java for Oracle Java Magazine. Gaston was also a former Microsoft MVP in technical computing. He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his two sons, Kevin and Brandon.