Alejandro Duarte is a Software Engineer, published author, and award winner, currently working for MariaDB as a Developer Advocate. Alejandro started to code at age 13 using the BASIC programming language on a black screen with a blinking cursor serving as the IDE. He quickly moved to C and C++, and then to Java during his Computer Science studies at the National University of Colombia from where he graduated. Alejandro moved to the UK and later to Finland to foster his career in the open-source software industry. He became one of the well-known faces in Java communities, having published articles and videos with hundreds of thousands of views on multiple content portals, as well as presented technical topics at international Java conferences and Java User Groups. You can contact him through his personal blog at programmingbrain.com and Twitter @alejandro_du.