Steve McConnell, the Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software, graduated from Whitman College and received an M. A. in software design from Seattle University, where he later taught. In addition to writing books, articles, reviews and columns, McConnell provides a consulting service to several companies. His books "Code Complete" (1993) and "Rapid Development" (1996) have both won Software Development magazine's Jolt award. The latter also won Windows Tech Journal's Star Tech award.