Huw Collingbourne is the technology director at SapphireSteel Software, developers of the “Sapphire” Ruby IDE for Visual Studio and the “Amethyst” IDE for the Adobe Flash Platform. He is author of The Book Of Ruby from No Starch Press. He runs Bitwise Courses and teaches courses on a range of programming topics.

Huw has been a programmer for more than 30 years. He is a well-known technology writer in the UK. For over ten years he wrote the Delphi and Java programming column for PC Plus Magazine. He has also written numerous opinion and programming columns (including tutorials on C#, Smalltalk, ActionScript and Ruby) for a number of computer magazines, such as Computer Shopper, Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine, PC Pro, and PC Plus. He is the author of the free ebook The Little Book of Ruby and is the editor of the online computing magazine Bitwise.

In the 1980s he was a pop music journalist and interviewed most of the New Romantic stars, such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Adam Ant, Boy George, and Depeche Mode. He is now writing a series of New Romantic murder mysteries.

At various times Huw has been a magazine publisher, editor, and TV broadcaster. He has an MA in English from the University of Cambridge and holds a 2nd dan black belt in aikido, a martial art which he teaches in North Devon, UK. The aikido comes in useful when trying (usually unsuccessfully) to keep his Pyrenean Mountain Dogs under some semblance of control.