Acknowledgments

Winston Churchill once said, "Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public." There is a lot of truth to those sentiments and I feel compelled to briefly thank the people who helped me "kill that monster," as well as those who made the whole process enjoyable.

It has been my pleasure to work with the good folks at Wrox. In particular, I would like to thank Jenny Watson for giving me the opportunity to write this book, my two development editors Kelly Talbot and Sydney Jones for their advice and help with keeping me on track, and my technical editor Ian Piper, as well as Gus Miklos, for their invaluable suggestions. I also would like to thank my manager Leon Katsnelson, who first brought the possibility of writing this book to my attention, and for his continuous support.

I would like to express my gratitude to several people who helped me out in various ways; these friends and world class programmers are (in alphabetical order): Piergiuliano Bossi, Ninh Bui, Marco Ceresa, Paolo Corti, Giovanni Intini, Hongli Lai, Ludovico Magnocavallo, Carlo Miron, Lawrence Oluyede, Gregg Pollack, and Valentino Volonghi. I can't help but also thank Antani and Tarapia Tapioco. A huge thank you goes straight to Marco Beri who was writing a book at the same time as I was writing mine. I'd sometimes tease him by saying that he wasn't as lucky as me, since his book wasn't on Rails, but on Django, a framework for the Python language. Inside jokes aside, our interaction via instant messaging kept my spirits high and provided encouragement during the many long nights spent in front of a glowing monitor. My appreciation also goes out to several people who kindly offered their help with reviewing this book as it was being written. I'm sorry that time constraints and logistics didn't allow for this. As well, I can't forget to mention Andrea Peltrin, a great Web designer who helped me improve the look and feel of the sample blog application that was developed for Chapters 5 and 6. All the people mentioned here did an amazing job in helping me to write the book you are holding, but I want to highlight how any mistakes or shortcomings that may appear here are mine and mine alone, and are in no way representative of these fine people's work.

I feel it's also important to acknowledge three people who didn't work directly on this book, yet were hugely influential in its coming to be. These are Yukihiro Matsumoto (a.k.a Matz), David Heinemeier Hansson, and Dave Thomas. Matz invented the Ruby language, one of the most beautiful programming languages out there. David created the Ruby on Rails framework, whose value will be revealed throughout the book. And finally, Dave Thomas wrote some of the earliest available books on the subject of Ruby and Rails. His work helped to popularize both of these and gave a large part of the programming public the opportunity to learn about this pair of technologies. These three people affected my life more than they will ever know, and for this I deeply respect and thank them.

A sincere, heartfelt thank you goes to my unofficial editor, my wife Jessica, whose mastery of the English language and craft of writing may only be surpassed by her patience, dedication, and beauty. Though not a programmer, her help has been invaluable in improving the quality of this book. Writing a book while maintaining a full-time day job and a regularly updated blog is a challenging task and an effort that leaves little to no time for your family. So I must thank Jessica once again for being the undemanding, lovely companion who helped me maintain my sanity during these busy times.

In conclusion, I want to thank you, my readers. You are investing your time, money, and trust in this book. For this I thank you and I want to reassure you that a great deal of care was placed into the writing of this book, so as not to betray your trust.