Matt Mathias is the Director of Teaching at Big Nerd Ranch and is also an iOS instructor.  In a former life, he earned a PhD in sociology and taught at the college level.  More recently, he works with Big Nerd Ranch’s talented authors and instructors to produce and teach the best programming texts and training possible.  When he’s not working, Matt enjoys bikes, comics, and games of all kinds. John Gallagher is a software engineer and instructor at Big Nerd Ranch. In addition to developing apps for clients, he has spent much of his career working with very small embedded systems and very large supercomputers. He greatly enjoys learning new programming languages and finding ways to use them together. Outside of work, John spends most of his free time with his wife and three daughters.