Russ Olsen started his career doing that other kind of engineering, the sort that involves motors, gears and getting dirty. Pretty rapidly the wonder of computer programming lured Russ away, which probably explains why most of his fingers are still intact. Since turning to coding, Russ has worked on everything from 3D design and image processing software to database query engines and workflow systems. Russ is the author of two highly regarded books: The first, Design Patterns in Ruby was published in 2008 and is a complete reworking of the classic Gang of Four patterns for a modern dynamic programming language. Russ's second book Eloquent Ruby is a guide to writing idiomatic Ruby.

Russ also has been secretly enamored with parentheses since a very early age and has spent the past few years working with Clojure. Russ is the VP of Consulting Services at Cognitect.