Acknowledgments

You might expect that writing the second edition of a book is easier than writing the first: just add another few chapters, make some modifications to the existing ones, and you’re done, right? If that sounds plausible, think about writing code for a new project compared with trying to modify an existing application. Now imagine doing it without a compiler or unit tests. Fortunately, although there are precious few ways of really testing the quality of a book, I have been lucky enough to have a great set of people supporting me and keeping the book on the straight and narrow.

Most importantly, my family have put up with me spending evenings writing, rewriting, editing, indexing, and generally not being with them as much as I’d like. My sons don’t seem to have been put off computing by this though, and my oldest son, Tom, is nearly old enough to start programming. It’ll be wonderful for him to have some idea of what I do all day at work. My children are generally in bed when I’m writing, though, so it’s mostly my wife Holly who has dealt with the worst of this. Despite our many commitments, my family is of utmost importance to me, and I’m immensely grateful that they have supported me in this and many other endeavors.

The formal peer reviewers are listed later on, but I’d like to add a note of personal thanks to all those who ordered early access copies of this second edition, finding typos and suggesting changes... and also constantly asking when the book was coming out. The very fact that I had readers who were eager to get their hands on the finished book was a huge source of encouragement.

I always get on well with the team at Manning, and it’s been a pleasure to work with some familiar friends from the first edition as well as newcomers. Mike Stephens and Jeff Bleiel have guided the whole process smoothly, as we decided what to change from the first edition and what to keep. They’ve generally put the whole thing into the right shape. Benjamin Berg and Katie Tennant provided expert copyediting and proofreading, respectively, never once expressing irritation with my Englishness, pickiness, or general bewilderment. The production team has worked its magic in the background, as ever, but I’m grateful to them nonetheless: Dottie Marsico, Janet Vail, Marija Tudor, and Mary Piergies. Finally, I’d like to thank the publisher, Marjan Bace, for allowing me a second edition and exploring some interesting future options.

Peer review is immensely important, not only for getting the technical details of the book right, but also the balance and tone. Sometimes the comments we received have merely shaped the overall book; in other cases I’ve made very specific changes in response. Either way, all feedback has been welcome. So thanks to the following reviewers for making the book better for all of us: Michael Caro, Austin Ziegler, Dave Corun, Amos Bannister, Lester Lobo, Marc Gravell, Nikander Bruggeman, Margriet Bruggeman, Joe Albahari, Tyson S. Maxwell, Horaci Macias, Eric Lippert, Kirill Osenkov, Stuart Caborn, Sean Reilly, Aleksy Nudelman, Keith Hill, Josh Heyer, and Jared Parsons.

In the first edition of the book I thanked the C# team, but this time I have wider thanks to give to Softies. I’m always amazed at how generous the various software engineers and project managers have been when I’ve pestered them with specific questions or sections to review. Some of these folks may not even have realized they were helping with the book, but they certainly were: Todd Apley, Mike Barnett, Chris Burrows, Wes Dyer, Manuel Fahndrich, Neal Gafter, Eric Lippert, Francesco Logozzo, Erik Meijer, Sam Ng, Kirill Osenkov, Alexandra Rusina, Chris Sells, Mads Torgersen, Stephen Toub, and Jeffrey Van Gogh.

Out of that list, I’d like to call Eric Lippert out for special attention, as the tech reviewer for the book once again and for writing the foreword. Since the first edition I’ve had many more conversations with Eric, and finally met up with him a couple of times, both of which have been delightful. I’m still utterly in awe of both his knowledge and the meticulous but readable way in which he shares it with the world both in his blog and on Stack Overflow. I couldn’t have asked for a better reviewer, and I look forward to bugging Eric more in the future about anything and everything related to C#.