Acknowledgments

Unusual as it may seem, I’d like to start with a self-acknowledgment. I had no idea that I could keep myself focused for so long on a specific topic of interest. The process of writing this book taught me the values of perseverance, self-determination, and self-belief.

Thanks to my team at Anshinsoft for creating a workplace where ideas are nurtured and given wings to fly. The late-night brainstorming sessions helped me to carve out many a complex domain model and ignited in me a love of DSLs.

Thanks to our client manager, Watanabe san (Mr. Tohru Watanabe), who taught me the domain model of the securities trading business. This book is filled with examples of what he’s taught me over the many years that we’ve interacted.

Thanks to the following reviewers for helping me improve the quality of the manuscript: Sivakumar Thyagarajan, Darren Neimke, Philipp K. Janert, James Hatheway, Kenneth DeLong, Edmon Begolli, Celso Gonzalez, Jason Jung, Andrew Cooke, Boris Lenzinger, David Dossot, Federico Tomassetti, Greg Donald, John S. Griffin, Sumit Pal, and Rick Wagner. Special thanks to reviewers Guillaume Laforge and John Wilson for teaching me nuances of writing Groovy DSLs; Michael Fogus for his suggestions on improving the contents of chapters 5 and 6; and Sven Efftinge for his suggestions on Xtext and external DSLs in chapter 7. And to Franco Lombardo for doing a final technical proofread of the manuscript shortly before it went to press.

During the course of writing DSLs In Action, the Twitter community was an invaluable source of assistance and inspiration, offering many words of wisdom.

I’ve had an excellent team to work with at Manning Publications. Cynthia Kane, my development editor, was tireless in assisting me with grammar, style, and taking a reader-centric view of every chapter that I wrote. If you find the text easy to read and understand, it’s thanks to the many iterations of each chapter that Cynthia went through and made me do as well. Thanks to Karen Tegtmeyer for organizing the peer reviews, Maureen Spencer for all the help she extended during the course of manuscript development, Joan Celmer for being so responsive during copyediting, and the rest of the Manning crew who provided support during production. I also want to express my thanks to publisher Marjan Bace for having confidence in me.

Very special thanks to my wife, Mou, who’s been the quintessential source of inspiration to me throughout this journey. Her words of encouragement at every step of this long and arduous process made all the difference in making it a meaningful and fruitful one.