I'm indebted to numerous people who have contributed to making this book a reality. My wife, Sandra Mallalieu, endured being a part-time widow during most of the writing of the book, taking solace in the company of our semi-orphaned pets. My comrades and former teammates at GE Corporate Research and Development were in large part the catalysts for the genesis of this book. I'm especially grateful to Rick Arthur, Andy Deitsch, Bill Smith, Jon Stillman, and the rest of the Information Technology Lab staff for being compatriots and intellectual sparring partners during my time in their company. As always, I owe enormous thanks to Andrea Schmitz for being inspirational, supportive, and an all-around Good Person. My thanks also go to Bill Lorensen, for getting me hooked on objects oh-so-many years ago, and to John Bloomer, for getting me in touch with O'Reilly to kick off this whole thing. I'd also like to thank my current team in the Information Technology group at the Harvard Business School, whose exploits have helped me to focus on some of the more practical facets of the subject matter.
Of course, the book itself wouldn't be what it is without my editor at O'Reilly, Mike Loukides, who helped guide the direction of the book at many levels. The technical reviewers: Andy Deitsch, Jonathan Knudsen, Tom McGinn, and Don Bolinger, provided invaluable comments that prompted some significant additions to the content.
The efforts of the design and production team at O'Reilly brought the whole thing to its final fruition. Madeleine Newell was the production editor; John Files copyedited the manuscript; David Futato and Sheryl Avruch provided quality control; Mike Sierra took care of conversion and gave technical support; Seth Maislin produced the index; Robert Romano produced the figures; Edie Freedman designed the cover, and Nancy Priest created the inside layout.
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| 0.4. Conventions Used in This Book |  | 1. Introduction |
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