Acknowledgments

I expected to work hard on this book. I didn’t expect that so many other people would work on it equally hard. I’m talking about the people at Manning, who in various capacities pushed the quality of this book close to my personal limit. A number of external reviewers took time to write detailed reports that helped refine the content. I hope they’re happy with the result.

I’ve learned Java from Cay’s books, and I’ve been recommending them to my students for many years. I’m honored that he kindly agreed to write the foreword for this book.

To all the reviewers: Aditya Kaushik, Alexandros Koufoudakis, Bonnie Bailey, Elio Salvatore, Flavio Diez, Foster Haines, Gregory Reshetniak, Hessam Shafiei Moqaddam, Irfan Ullah, Jacob Romero, John Guthrie, Juan J. Durillo, Kimberly Winston-Jackson, Michał Ambroziewicz, Serge Simon, Steven Parr, Thorsten Weber, and Travis Nelso, your suggestions helped make this a better book.

The origin of my passion for programming can be traced back to my father teaching a curious eight-year-old me how to draw a circle with a for loop and two enchantments called cos and sin. Grazie!