David Alan Black, Ph.D.
instructor
David A. Black has been programming in Ruby since 2000, and writing Rails applications since shortly after the introduction of Rails in 2004. He is the author of Ruby on Rails: Ruby techniques for Rails developers from Manning Publications, and has been interviewed by InfoQ and for the Rails Podcast.
David is one of the founding co-directors of Ruby Central, Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization dedicated to supporting and funding Ruby events and initiatives, and the parent organization of the highly successful annual RubyConf and RailsConf events.
In addition, David is the chief author of the standard Ruby scanf library; the programmer and maintainer of RCRchive, the official site for Ruby language change requests; a speaker at Ruby and Rails users groups and conferences in London, Denver, Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, and elsewhere; and a frequent participant on the major Ruby and Rails mailing lists.
David was a tenured member of the faculty of the Department of Communication at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, NJ, where he taught for thirteen years. He left Seton Hall in 2005 to pursue Ruby and Rails training, development, and authorship full-time.
David is the director of Ruby Power and Light, LLC, a Ruby and Rails consultancy.