Michael Nygard has been a professional programmer and architect for over 15 years. He has delivered systems to the U. S. Government, the military, banking, finance, agriculture, and retail industries. Michael has written numerous articles and editorials, spoken at Comdex, and coauthored one of the earliest Java books. Michael has designed, built, and engineered systems for B2B exchanges, retail commerce sites, travel and leisure sites, an information brokerage, and web applications for the intelligence community. Among other exciting projects in his position as Director of Engineering for Totality Corporation, Michael led the operations team through the launch of a tier 1 retail site. His experience with the birth and infancy of this retail platform gives him a unique perspective on building software for high performance and high reliability in the face of an actively hostile environment.