Developing Web Applications with Perl, memcached, MySQL® and Apache

Acknowledgments

One weekend in 1993, I had the chance to go on a getaway to San Diego. Instead, I opted to stay home and download, onto 26 floppies, Slackware Linux, which I promptly installed onto my Packard Bell 386. I could never get the built-in video card to work with X, so I ended up buying a separate video card and had to edit my XConfig file to get it to work. How much more interesting this was to do than editing a config.sys and an autoexec.bat! From then on, I was hooked. I worked at Siemens Ultrasound Group in Issaquah, Washington, at the time. An engineer there named Debra, when asked what was a good thing to learn, said something I'll never forget: "Learn Perl." Debra — you were right!

I always wanted to be a C++ graphics programmer. That didn't happen because of this thing called the World Wide Web. I remember Ray Jones and Randy Bentson of Celestial Software showing me a program called Mosaic, which allowed you to view text over the Internet. Images would be launched using XV. Everywhere I worked, I had to write programs that ran on the Web, which required me to write CGI in Perl. So much for my goal of being a C++ programmer — but I consider this a great trade for a great career. (I did eventually get to write C++ for MySQL!)

I would first like to thank my editor, Maureen Spears, who is not only a great editor, but also a friend. She gave me much-needed encouragement throughout the writing of this book.

A special thanks goes to John Bokma for his meticulous attention ...