Simon Roberts started his computing career as a programmer in the early 1980s and built several of his own microprocessor-based computers. He moved to Sun Microsystems, Inc. in mid-1995, and almost immediately became the lead Java instructor in the United Kingdom In 1998, Simon moved to Colorado, where he still lives. While at Sun, he created the Sun Certified Programmer, Developer, and Architect certifications, and worked in teams on several other certifications. He wrote three books on Java, including two certification study guides: One covering the Programmer and Developer exams, and one on the Architect exam. He left Sun in 2004 and became an independent instructor, architect, and software engineer.