Jason R Briggs grew up in Hawke's Bay, on the east coast of New Zealand, but for the last 20+ years has divided his time between NZ, Thailand and England.
Which is entirely far too much time spent strapped inside a glorified tin can with wings.
He currently lives in England, in a small village just outside of London, where he spends much of his time grumbling about the weather... the people on the Underground... the distinct lack of anything resembling a proper antipodean lager. ಠ_ಠ
Jason started using computers at the age of 8, when his father unboxed a Radio Shack TRS-80 in the living room and set it up on an old card table. It smelled distinctly of plastic and ozone, but the low hum and flickering lights were a magnet to a small boy. Shortly after, he learned to program with a language designed for ease of use (BASIC) - so it's somewhat fitting that his first book, Python for Kids, should be learning to program with a modern programming language, also reknowned for its ease of use.
The original free version of the book (no longer available) was downloaded over 50,000 times, and translated by the community into Spanish, French, German, Italian and Bengali. Python for Kids itself has now been translated into Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Polish, Dutch, Italian and Russian, with more languages to come.