Sandi Metz describes herself as an "accidental author." Accident or not, her book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) is beloved in the ruby community, and she's used her ability to break down complex coding topics to build the second phase of her programming career, one focused on teaching and speaking. In part I of this two-part interview, she talks to us about life pre- and post-POODR, what makes her a great teacher, and why she it took her four years to write POODR.