As authors, we can take full credit for typing the words and creating the diagrams. (Yay, us!) But the whole truth is that we would still be staring at a blank page if not for the efforts of an army of contributors, collaborators, and mentors.
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Aaron Hillegass, for believing that the two of us could produce a work worthy of the Big Nerd Ranch name. Thank you for your immeasurable faith and support.
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Matt Mathias, for guiding us through the development of this book, especially during the crucial last mile. You made sure that time that would have been spent watching cat videos or Downton Abbey reruns was instead dedicated to writing.
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Brandy Porter, for the care and (literal) feeding of the authors on numerous occasions. You worked your magic behind the curtain, orchestrating a sequence of events that made finishing this work possible. Thank you.
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Jonathan Martin, our coinstructor and language maven. Thank you for enthusiastically teaching the in-progress course materials on which this book is based and offering thoughtful criticism throughout the many revisions.
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Our proofreaders, technical reviewers, and guinea pigs: Mike Zornek, Jeremy Sherman, Josh Justice, Jason Reece, Garry Smith, Andrew Jones, Stephen Christopher, and Bill Phillips. Thank you for volunteering as tribute.
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Elizabeth Holaday, our infinitely patient and reassuring editor. Thank you for breaking us out of the echo chamber, being the voice of reason, and reminding us always of our readers.
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Ellie Volckhausen, who designed our cover.
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Simone Payment, our proofreader, who kept things consistent.
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Chris Loper at IntelligentEnglish.com, who designed and produced the print and ebook versions of the book. His DocBook toolchain made life much easier, too.
Lastly, thank you to the countless students who have taken the week-long training. Without your curiosity and your questions, none of this matters. This work is a reflection of the insight and inspiration you have given us over the span of those many weeks. We hope the otters made the training a little lighter.