Acknowledgments

Before this book goes to press, before it is bound, before it is boxed, before it is shipped, and before you get your hands on it, there are many other hands that have touched it along the way. Even if you have an eBook copy that didn’t go through that process, there were numerous hands on the bits and bytes that you downloaded—hands that edited it, reviewed it, typeset it, and proofread it. If it weren’t for all of those hands, this book wouldn’t exist.

First, a big thank you to everyone at Manning for working hard, for their patience when the writing wasn’t moving as fast as it should have, and for prodding me along to get it done: Marjan Bace, Michael Stephens, Cynthia Kane, Andy Carroll, Benjamin Berg, Alyson Brener, Dottie Marisco, Mary Piergies, Janet Vail, and many others behind the scenes.

Getting feedback early and often is just as critical when writing a book as it is when developing software. While the pages of this book were still in a very rough form, there were several great reviewers who took the time to read the drafts and provide feedback that helped shape the final product. Thanks to the following: Bob Casazza, Chaoho Hsieh, Christophe Martini, Gregor Zurowski, James Wright, Jeelani Basha, Jens Richter, Jonathan Thoms, Josh Hart, Karen Christenson, Mario Arias, Michael Roberts, Paul Balogh, and Ricardo da Silva Lima. And special thanks to John Ryan for his thorough technical review of the manuscript shortly before it went into production.