Acknowledgments

I am thankful to ...

Erica Sadun, who—four years ago at a developer conference in Seattle—put the notion into my head that someday I could be a book author too. When I got the opportunity to provide technical feedback for several of her books, I found that my commentary was both welcome and highly relevant. This has inspired my writing ever since.

Scott Meyers, for asking me on behalf of Manning if I would consider writing a book. He supported my idea of writing a “vertical book,” slicing through several different technologies, as opposed to writing a “horizontal book,” covering only a single technology. I could have chickened out at several points before we signed the book contract, but Scott’s trust in me—which was entirely based on a few blog articles I had sent him as samples—kept me in the game.

Bert Bates at Manning, who taught me how to shift from writing blog articles to designing instructive book chapters. I had arrived at my own “tutorial style” over several years of writing blog tutorials at cocoanetics.com, and initially there was doubt that my style would work for a Manning book. Bert believed in me and convinced the powers that be that my style was perfect for an advanced-level Manning book. He also gave me a ton of instructional tools that I am using to this day, even in blog posts.