Acknowledgments

Many different people helped make this book possible. Thanks to my agent Neil Salkind for getting this project off the ground, and to Jenny Watson and Maryann Steinhart at Wiley for helping turn it from a proposal into a book. Thanks to the technical editor, Raymond Budd, for his attention to detail in verifying the source code for this book, and the copyeditor, Kathryn Duggan, for her attention to matters of style and clarity.

Without the Rails community as a whole, this book would have been a lot less interesting and more difficult. Thanks to David Heinemeier Hansson for creating Rails in the first place, and the entire core team for the ongoing implementation. Also thanks to people like Dave Thomas and Chad Fowler for their part in popularizing Rails. The Rails community is enlivened by a fantastic ongoing conversation of ideas, tutorials, and arguments online. I've tried to acknowledge individual developers and bloggers in each chapter, and there are too many to list here, but thanks to you all.

At Motorola, a number of managers and co-workers were supportive of my initial attempts to build Rails projects as well as the beginnings of this book. Special thanks to Greg Bell, Anne-Marie Jolie, MaryAnn Marks, Jay Marusich, Staszek Salik, Mike Wagner, and Michal Wieja.

Pathfinder has been amazingly supportive of this book, both in concept and in the amount of time spent. Thanks to Dietrich Kappe and Bernhard Kappe for the opportunity. Anthony Caliendo, Michael King, Jason Sendlebach, Alice Toth, and Lydia Tripp are all team members who have been supportive of me and this book. Thanks to all of you.

I'd like to acknowledge and thank Wally Dodge, who was my AP Computer Science instructor, and is as responsible as anybody for my choice of career.

I'm lucky to be part of an amazing and loving family, both immediate and extended. At the risk of angering everybody else, I'd like to especially acknowledge my godparents, Nancy and Richard Sher, and my cousin Dan Sher.

My parents, Donna and Donnie Rappin, have always enthusiastically supported me, no matter where I chose to go.

My wife, Erin, still and always the best part of my life, made it through this project with grace and humor. Thank you for everything.

My children, Emma and Elliot, are now old enough to read this for themselves. Hi! You are wonderful and amazing kids, and I love you both.