Dave Astels has been involved in software development since the early 1980s, since 1988 he has been almost exclusively using various OO technologies. Dave has 6 years of Smalltalk experience (various flavours), at least 4 years of C++, and over 4 years of Java. Dave heads SaorsaDevelopment which is An Agile Software Studio operated according to ideas put forth in:
The Pragmatic Programmer
Software Craftsmanship
XP
Dave has been a CoadCertifiedMentor for TogetherSoft, where he spent most of his time running http://www.togethercommunity.com and learning & writing about java, patterns, extreme programming, Together, and other cool stuff. Dave, along with GranvilleMiller and MiroslavNovak, have written a book on XP (PracticalGuideToExtremeProgramming) which was published in Feb 2002 by Prentice Hall. Dave is currently writing a tutorial book on test-driven development using Java (PracticalGuideToTestDrivenDevelopment). (the books about using Java... I'm writing it using Emacs, LaTeX, and various other pragmatic tools) You might have met Dave at XP2001 or XP2002,. You can contact Dave at mailto:dave@saorsa.com – DaveAstels
