Acknowledgments

Every book you read is a tremendous undertaking and involves many more people behind the scenes than just your lowly authors.

We’d like to thank all the following people for helping make this book happen.

Thanks to Jim Moore for creating the cover illustration and to Kim Wimpsett for her outstanding copyediting (and any remaining errors are surely the fault of our last-minute edits).

A special thanks to Johannes Brodwall, Chad Fowler, Stephen Jenkins, Bil Kleb, and Wes Reisz for their insight and helpful contributions.

And finally, thanks to all our reviewers who graciously gave their time and talent to help make this a better book: Marcus Ahnve, Eldon Alameda, Sergei Anikin, Matthew Bass, David Bock, A. Lester Buck III, Brandon Campbell, Forrest Chang, Mike Clark, John Cook, Ed Gibbs, Dave Goodlad, Ramamurthy Gopalakrishnan, Marty Haught, Jack Herrington, Ron Jeffries, Matthew Johnson, Jason Hiltz Laforge, Todd Little, Ted Neward, James Newkirk, Jared Richardson, Frédérick Ros, Bill Rushmore, David Lázaro Saz, Nate Schutta, Matt Secoske, Guerry Semones, Brian Sletten, Mike Stok, Stephen Viles, Leif Wickland, and Joe Winter.

Venkat says:

I would like to thank Dave Thomas for being such a wonderful mentor. Without his guidance, encouragement, and constructive criticism this book would have stayed a great idea.

I’m blessed to have Andy Hunt as my coauthor; I’ve learned a great deal from him. He is not only technically savvy (a fact that any pragmatic programmer out there already knows) but has incredible expressive power and exceptional attitude. I have admired the Pragmatic Programmers in every step of making of this book—they’ve truly figured and mastered the right set of tools, techniques, and, above all, attitude that goes into publishing.

I thank Marc Garbey for his encouragement. The world can use more people with his sense of humor and agility—he’s a great friend. My special thanks to the geeks (err, friends) I had the pleasure to hang out with on the road—Ben Galbraith, Brian Sletten, Bruce Tate, Dave Thomas, David Geary, Dion Almaer, Eitan Suez, Erik Hatcher, Glenn Vanderburg, Howard Lewis Ship, Jason Hunter, Justin Gehtland, Mark Richards, Neal Ford, Ramnivas Laddad, Scott Davis, Stu Halloway, and Ted Neward—you guys are awesome! I thank Jay Zimmerman (a.k.a. agile driver), director of NFJS, for his encouragement and providing an opportunity to express my ideas on agility to his clients.

I thank my dad for teaching me the right set of values, and to you, Mom, for you’re my true inspiration. None of this would have been possible but for the patience and encouragement of my wife, Kavitha, and my sons, Karthik and Krupakar; thank you and love you.

Andy says:

Well, I think just about everyone has been thanked already, but I’d like to thank Venkat especially for inviting me to contribute to this book. I wouldn’t have accepted that offer from just anyone, but Venkat has been there and done that. He knows how this stuff works.

I’d like to thank all the good agile folks from the Snowbird get-together. None of us invented agility, but everyone’s combined efforts have certainly made it a growing and powerful force in the modern world of software development.

And of course, I’d like to thank my family for their support and understanding. It has been a long ride from the original The Pragmatic Programmer book, but it has been a fun one.

And now, on with the show.