Preface

Looking back, I still can’t believe that I did it.

When I started to contribute to Netty in late 2011, I would never have imagined that I’d be writing a book about Netty and be one of the core developers of the Framework itself.

It all started when I got involved in 2009 with the Apache James project, a Java-based mail server developed under the Apache Software Foundation.

Apache James, like many applications, required a solid networking abstraction to build upon. While investigating the field of projects that provide networking abstractions, I stumbled upon Netty and immediately fell in love with it. As I became more familiar with Netty from a user’s perspective, I started to turn my gaze on improvements and giving back to the community.

Despite my first contributions being of limited scope, it became obvious very quickly how beneficial making contributions and the related discussions with the community, especially with Trustin Lee, the founder of the project, were to my personal growth. This experience grabbed hold of me, and I enjoyed spending my free time becoming more engaged in the community. I found myself helping on mailing lists and joining discussions on the IRC channel. Working on Netty began as a hobby but it quickly evolved into a passion.