Acknowledgments

The past two years have been quite an intense experience. Writing a book while working on a startup (and having your first child) is definitely not a recipe for relaxation! I would never have managed to get through it without the support of my incredibly patient wife, Deepthi. There were times when I just hit a blank wall and her encouragement is all that kept me going. Thanks, sweetheart, I could never have done this without you!

I would also like to thank my parents who started me down this path all those years ago. I grew up in India at a time when computers were these fantastical things, out of reach for most people. They took a loan to buy me a computer, instead of buying their first car, and without that I wouldn’t be here today. So thanks a million, Mom and Dad!

I also want to acknowledge Ravi Mohan, who in 2001 pointed me to Lisp and to Paul Graham’s essays. Thanks for showing me the way! And, I guess, thanks also to Paul Graham, who is an inspiration to many of us.

Thanks to the folks at Runa, for letting me work on this book. Ashok Narasimhan, the founder, was extremely supportive of the whole effort. The rest of my colleagues were also very supportive. Specifically, I’d like to thank Robert Berge, Kyle Oba, and George Jahad for their feedback and encouragement. Finally, I’d like to give special thanks to Siva Jagadeesan who has supported me throughout this effort in so many ways.

At Manning, I’d like to thank Michael Stephens who provided guidance, feedback, and support during the many months it took to get the book done, and my development editor Susan Harkins for her help and patience and for sticking with the project from beginning to end. The production team of Linda Recktenwald, Dennis Dalinnik, Janet Vail, and Mary Piergies also deserves my thanks for turning my manuscript into the book you are reading today.

Finally, thanks to the following reviewers who read my manuscript during development and provided invaluable feedback: Doug Warren, Deepak Vohra, Jeroen Benckhuijsen, Sivakumar Thyagarajan, Kevin Butler, Jason Rogers, Craig Smith, Stuart Caborn, Robby O’Connor, Tim Moore, Peter Pavlovich, Federico Tomassetti, Steve Freeman, Dave Pawson, Joshua Heyer, Keith Kim, Christopher David Stevenson, Ramnivas Laddad, Andrew Oswald, Pratik Patel, Baishampayan Ghose, Anton Mazkovoi, Christopher Bailey, and Tom Flaherty.

Special thanks to Tom Flaherty who also served as technical proofreader for the book, checking the code and reading the final manuscript one more time, during production.