About the Authors

or: They're huge nerds

Natasha's Face

Natasha Jarus is probably not a Linux witch. She is, however, a Ph.D candidate at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She's been programming for far too long and spent 4 years in hell as a student employee maintaining S&T’s Linux machines.

During her time as a student, tutor, and instructor in the university’s Computer Science department, she observed that students struggled with the details of programming on computers; this struggle impeded clear understanding of the concepts they were implementing. Yet, existing classes had no room to teach such skills.

In 2016, she taught a new lab course for freshmen and sophomores intended to fill this gap in the curriculum. The material for this class, topics she found helpful as a student, as a researcher, and in industry, became the basis for this book. She realized that students would benefit from having a reference they could look back on throughout their career, and allowing them to study ahead left more lab time for hands-on exercises.

When not staring out the window dreaming up implausible scenarios for short stories, she stares out the window dreaming of functional programming, abstract math, and moving to a distant mountain with her lovely wife and chickens.

Wisely's Face

Michael Wisely might be a large bird.

We do know that he is a passionate educator and software engineer. During his time in graduate school at Missouri S&T, he created a course on contemporary programming languages which explored the different programming paradigms possible in languages such as Go, Javascript, Julia, and Elm.

Both his experience and his knack for absurd story plots made this book what it is today. Without his efforts, this book would be far less accessible, and may not have been completed at all.