This Acknowledgement section is an experiment to prove whether my theory is correct that the sooner I start writing thank you notes, the fewer people I’ll forget to thank. I started writing this section when I formatted my very first chapter. If I have forgotten to name my first-born child after you (alongside all the others listed below), it is only because of the insomnia I subjected myself to during the summer of 2008 that has resulted in short-term memory loss. In other words, I really hope I have included everyone, as this book is my life’s work thus far, and I want everyone who helped to know my heart-felt thanks.

First and foremost, I must thank Rob Caron and Sean Laberee for inspiring me to write tips about Visual Studio. Sean provided the vision, and Rob kept me going.

Since this is my first book, I never understood why nearly every author in their acknowledgements section profusely thanks their book publishers and editors. Now I completely understand. Thanks to Ben Ryan, Devon Musgrave, and Melissa von Tschudi-Sutton at Microsoft Press for their excellent guidance in my first publication, their patience with all my newbie questions, and their ability to set my expectations about how much effort goes into capturing screen shots. Thanks again for this opportunity to help my hometown. Also, I need to give a shout out to Jim Newkirk for all the book-writing advice that kept me, the deer in headlights, from dying of pure fright.

To my peer reviewers, who despite their own demanding work schedules, made the time to review my chapters and give me detailed feedback on such a short notice, I could not have put together this book without you. My heart-felt thanks to Dylan Lingelbach, Sean Laberee, Fiona Fung, Chris McGuire, Josh Stevens, Noah Coad, Habib Heydarian, Monica Boris, Douglas Hodges, Pat Brenner, Rahul Jajoo, and Rob Caron.

I have to acknowledge those who kept my head above water during the summer of 2008. Thanks to Charlie Calvert for the support and the confidence boosts as we prepared to speak at TechEd on the Visual Studio IDE tips and tricks. Thanks to Bryan Kirschner for the encouragement and the support for my talk at the O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention, as I faced many chapter deadlines during that time. And my heart-felt thanks to everyone on the CodePlex team for sharing an office with me this entire time.

Lastly, thanks to my parents Jane and Louie Smolensky, for introducing me to computers at such a young age and an endless supply of Legos.