Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my wife Caroline for her amazing patience and support throughout the writing of this book—since I was also starting my company Ruboss and attempting to write Enterprise Flexible Rails all at the same time. Anyone who has written a book or started a company knows how much time these things take, so the fact that over the past two years I wrote this book, started a company, and attempted to write a second book means that Caroline has made a lot of sacrifices.

Second, I’d like to thank my son Evan for his understanding. I managed to have enough time to play “Super Mario Galaxy” and other games with him, but not enough time to finish building the second Lego Mindstorm robot we’ve been working on. Now I will, and Robogator won’t just be a snapping mouth with eyes, but it will have legs and a tail! (Someday I look forward to teaching him how to program these things too...)

I’d also like to thank Dima Berastau. He made huge contributions to Ruboss during 2008, and even contributed a couple of pages to this book and helped with the Yahoo! Maps integration code in chapter 7. The RestfulX Framework is pleasant to work with, and that’s Dima’s doing. Finally, I made a lot of mistakes during our year of working together building Ruboss 1.0, and I’d like Dima to know that I appreciated the opportunity to work with him.

Next, I’d like to thank Scott Patten. Scott became employee No. 1 at Ruboss in March 2008, and his tireless efforts, coding prowess, and ability to understand the needs of clients has been instrumental to our success. When Dima left and Ruboss pivoted from being Ruboss 1.0 (a company trying to sell a framework) to Ruboss 2.0 (a company building a Web 2.0 product), Scott stepped up and became a true cofounder.

I’d also like to thank Steve Byrne. Not only did Steve jump in at the last minute to do the technical proofreading for me, but he also did a phenomenally thorough job of it. I expected this, since I learned Flex from him (and Matt Wyman) five years ago, so I already knew what depth of knowledge Steve had. Steve knows Flex better than I do, and he’s an outstanding architect and technical mind. If Steve ever writes a book, I’ll be the first to buy it, and you should be the second.

Next, I’d like to thank Jason McLaren and Ken Pratt, since both of their efforts enabled me to have a lot more time for this book. Also, helping Jason learn Flex sharpened my focus and helped this book; sometimes one forgets what the right questions are.

I’d also like to thank Duane Nickull, Adobe’s evangelist in Vancouver, who has been a source of encouragement for me over the years, letting me speak about Flexible Rails and RestfulX at his events and letting me chip in a couple paragraphs to his Web 2.0 Architectures book.

Next I’d like to thank Dane Brown, who kept me well caffeinated over the year that Ruboss was working out of WorkSpace. Without your espresso macchiatos keeping me going, this book might not have happened at all!

I’d also like to thank J.D. and David from User Friendly for letting Manning use the User Friendly cartoons in the Hello! series. J.D., I’ve had a good time putting words in the mouths of your characters, and I hope you get a couple laughs out of them if you read this book.

Special thanks to the following reviewers who read the manuscript at different stages during its development, taking time out of their busy schedules to provide feedback—their comments made this a better book: Andrew Siemer, Doug Warren, Joe Hoover, Justin Tyler Wiley, Robert Dempsey, Sean Moore, Tariq Ahmed, Tony Obermeit, Philipp K. Janert, Jeffery Pickett, Robert Glover, Reza Rahman, Maris Whetstone, Edmond Begoli, Dusty Jewett, Andrew Rubalcaba, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Jeff Pickett, and Lester Lobo.

Finally, I’d like to thank the team at Manning.

First, I’d like to thank Marjan Bace and Mike Stephens for having the idea for the Hello! series and for letting me contribute to it.

Second, I’d like to thank development editor Cynthia Kane. Cynthia endured the brunt of the format frustrations, maintaining her cool and sense of humor while I vented about “this isn’t a book, it’s a science project!” and other similar sentiments. I appreciate her encouragement and composure, especially as I hit reset on the whole book and started over. I’m not sure if she believed I would actually ever finish the book, but if she didn’t, she did a good job of hiding that fact.

Next, I’d like to thank Liz Welch for her amazing job of copyediting. I needed to do a few passes through each chapter, so that I could see her formatting changes and her insertions and deletions without them drowning out her comments. The best compliment I can pay her is that the book still felt like my writing, only better—not some “designed by committee” neutered prose. The second-best compliment I can pay her is that Maureen Spencer’s job of proofreading actually seemed pretty easy. Of course, Maureen is great, but this seems like an easier trip than Flexible Rails was for her. So Liz and Cynthia get credit for that.

One more thing: I’d like to thank Ruboss’s clients. Besides being fun to work with, without you we wouldn’t be able to build our own product and I wouldn’t have been able to write this book. (Oh yeah, we wouldn’t eat either!) We love you.