A very heartfelt and special thank you goes to my editor, Debra Williams Cauley, for recognizing my potential and ever-patiently guiding me through the all of the ups and downs of getting this book finished over the course of a year and a half. She’s also one of the sweetest, smartest women I know, and I look forward to a long and productive friendship with her. The rest of my team at Addison-Wesley was also phenomenally helpful, patient, and always encouraging: San Dee Phillips, Songlin Qiu, Mandie Frank, Marie McKinley, and Heather Fox.

Of course, my family bore the brunt of my preoccupation with working on the book, especially during the last six months (once the deadline pressure started getting really intense). Taylor, Liam, and Desi: I love you so much. Thank you for giving me the time and tranquility to write. I’ll never be able to thank my longtime partner (and favorite Rails developer) Desi McAdam enough for taking over practically all of my domestic duties during this time. I also have to thank my dad Marco, for insightfully suggesting that I propose a whole Ruby series instead of just this book.

Writing a book of this scope and magnitude is by no means a solo effort—I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my extended team of contributors and reviewers. David Black helped kickstart my early progress by contributing material about routing and controllers. Fellow series authors James Adam, Trotter Cashion, and Matt Pelletier also chipped in, with contributions about plugins, ActiveRecord, and production deployment, respectively. Matt Bauer helped me finish the Ajax and XML chapters, and Jodi Showers wrote the Capistrano chapter. Pat Maddox rescued me during a particularly bad case of writer’s block and helped me finish the RSpec chapter, for which David Chelimsky later provided an expert review. Charles Brian Quinn and Pratik Naik provided timely advice and contributions on background processing. Diego Scataglini also helped with review of some of the later chapters.

Francis Hwang and Sebastian Delmont provided accurate technical review, starting early in the life of the book. They were later joined by Wilson Bilkovich and Courtenay Gasking, who, in addition to contributing original writing and sidebar content, did a lot of work helping me to meet final deadlines. Wilson in particular kept me laughing the whole time with his witty comedic timing, and even rewrote the background processing chapter to incorporate his expert knowledge of the subject. Other valued reviewers include Sam Aaron, Nola Stowe, and Susan Potter. In the last few weeks, my newest friend and programming pair Jon “Lark” Larkowski has picked out a number of remaining errors that other reviewers somehow overlooked.

The infamous Zed Shaw was my roommate during a significant amount of time I spent working on the book and was a constant source of inspiration and motivation. Also a huuuuge thank you to my friends on the #caboose IRC channel for consistently providing expert insights and opinions. Some I’ve already mentioned—others are (in no particular order): Josh Susser (hasmanyjosh), Rick Olson (technoweenie), Ezra Zygmuntovich (ezmobius), Geoffrey Grosenbach (topfunky), Robby Russel (robbyonrails), Jeremy Hubert, Dave Fayram (kirindave), Matt Lyon (mattly), Joshua Sierles (corp), Dan Peterson (danp), Dave Astels (dastels), Trevor Squires (protocool), David Goodlad (dgoodlad), Amy Hoy (eriberri), Josh Goebel (Dreamer3), Evan Phoenix (evan), Ryan Davis (zenspider), Michael Schubert, Cristi Balan (evilchelu), Jamie van Dyke (fearoffish), Nic Williams (drnick), Eric Hodel (drbrain), James Cox (imajes), Kevin Clark (kevinclark), Thomas Fuchs (madrobby), Manfred Stienstra (manfred-s), Pastie Paste Bot (pastie), Evan Henshaw-Plath (rabble), Rob Orsini (rorsini), Adam Keys (therealadam), John Athayde (boborishi), Robert Bousquet, Bryan Helkamp (brynary), and Chad Fowler. I should also mention that David Heinemeier Hansson (nextangler) himself was always encouraging, and even answered a few sticky questions I had along the way.

Plenty of former colleagues from ThoughtWorks indirectly helped this book happen. First and foremost, Martin Fowler is not only a role model and inspiration—he also helped me secure the relationship with Addison-Wesley, and offered much personal advice and support in the early days of the project, when I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. ThoughtWorks CEO Roy Singham recognized the potential of Rails in early 2005, once I introduced him to David Hansson, and was subsequently steadfast in his support of my Ruby evangelism (including doing quite a bit of it himself around the world). That was especially important in the early times, when many other respected people at ThoughtWorks thought Rails was nothing but hype and wouldn’t last.

There are so many others at ThoughtWorks that I must acknowledge and thank. First of all, I’m proud to have mentored Jay Fields in Ruby, and point to him as living proof that students can exceed their teachers. Carlos Villela is part of the reason I got interested in Ruby again after my initial dislike of it. My buddy Upendra Kanda and I spent long solitary months working on the first paid Rails client projects at ThoughtWorks. Hacker extraordinaire Michael Granger taught me much about the creative possibilities with Ruby. Fred George is a mentor and inspiration. Steve Wilkins and Fern Schiff were some of the initial supporters of Rails on the business development side. Other enthusiastic Rails supporters at ThoughtWorks who helped me in some way or another include Badri Janakiraman, Rohan Kini, Kartik C, Paul Hammant, Robin Gibson, Nick Drew, Srihari Srinivasan, Julian Boot, Jon Tirsen, Chris Stevenson, Alex Verkhovsky, Patrick Farley, Neal Ford, Ron Campbell, Julias Shaw, David Rice, Jeff Patton (finish your book!), Kent Spillner, John Hume, Jake Scruggs, and Stephen Chu.

My paid work with Rails has involved some pretty progressive thinkers and risk-takers on the client side, good people who trusted me and my teams to deliver solutions with unproven technology. I can’t possibly name everyone who fits into this category, but some stand out: I have to thank Hank Roark, Tom Horsley, Howard Todd, Jeff Elam, and Carol Rinauro for their unwavering support and trust at Deere. I must thank Robert Brown at Barclays for being forward-thinking, a friend, and source of encouragement. Dirk and Brett Elmendorf at Rackspace were terrific to work with.

InfoQ.com has also been very cooperative and understanding of my time constraints while finishing the book. A very special thank you to Floyd Marinescu and Diana Plesa for being so patient, as well as my team of Ruby writers, including Werner Schuster and Sebastien Auvray.

As of the beginning of January 2007, my friend Mark Smith has given me the distinct pleasure of working with a group of brilliant people on interesting Web 2.0 projects, based in sunny Atlantic Beach, Florida. The First Street Live team has been incredibly supportive 100% of the time: Marian Phelan, Ryan Poland, Nick Strate, Joe Hunt, Clay Kromberg, Dena Freeman, and everyone else... (Mark, I love you man, and we’re gonna be friends forever. Thanks for the fun work environment, the book party, and constant intellectual stimulation. I really don’t believe I would have been able to finish this book so successfully if I hadn’t come down here to work for you.)

Last, but not least, I owe a heartfelt thanks to PragDave Thomas, who was quoted as saying: “Obie writing a book about Rails would be like the Marquis de Sade writing a book about table manners.”