Acknowledgments

Thanks to the entire Pragmatic Bookshelf team for letting me work with them. Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt, Susannah Pfalzer, Fahmida Y. Rashid, and all of the rest that I’ve worked with have been unreasonably patient and very kind; particular thanks go to Susannah for answering all of my many questions, to Dave for bearing with my explanations of some of the joyous oddities in VimL syntax, and especially to Fahmida for keeping this project on track in spite of my constant mangling of schedules.

Many thanks to the world’s greatest technical reviewers—Barry Arthur, John Cater, Ingo Karkat, Guillaume Laforge, William LaFrance, Mac Liaw, and Jared Richardson—for detailed insights into the code, as well as general high-level suggestions. Thanks also to Nathan Neff (the greatest programmer in the world) for his multitude of suggestions and corrections; to Christopher Coleman, Michael Easter, Kevin Munc, and Josh Scott for reading and for encouraging me through the writing process; and to Tim Berglund, Chad Fowler, Scott Minnich, Paul Nelson, and Kurt Wise for encouraging me, sometimes wittingly and sometimes probably not, in this effort.

Extreme thanks go to my family, who played the part of foremost supporters even while I spent so much time unavailable, working on the book. To Dad and Mom (Dave and Debbie) and to Zak and Beth, Abi, Sarah, Solomon, Hannah, Joanna, Rebekah, Susannah, Noah, Samuel, Gideon, Joshua, and Daniel: thanks for asking how it was going, listening to my spontaneous lectures on the writing process, assuring me that I would one day finish, and everything in between. I love you all.

And thanks most of all to my Creator, Jesus Christ. A faithful saying still worthy of all acceptation is that He came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief (the apostle Paul has since moved on). To Him be glory.^[3]