Personal Comments and Acknowledgments
From Michael Barr
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in writing a book or two. But now that I have written several, I must confess that I was naive when I started. I had no idea how much work it would take, or how many other people would have to get involved in the process. Another thing that surprised me was how easy it was to find a willing publisher. I had expected that to be the hard part.
I continue to be thankful to all of the following people for sharing their ideas and reviewing my work on the first edition: Toby Bennett, Paul Cabler (and the other great folks at Arcom), Mike Corish, Kevin D’Souza, Don Davis, Steve Edwards, Mike Ficco, Barbara Flanagan, Jack Ganssle, Stephen Harpster, Jonathan Harris, Jim Jensen, Mark Kohler, Andy Kollegger, Jeff Mallory, Ian Miller, Henry Neugauss, Chris Schanck, Brian Silverman, John Snyder, Jason Steinhorn, Ian Taylor, Lindsey Vereen, Jeff Whipple, and Greg Young.
I would also like to thank our editor, Andy Oram. Without his enthusiasm for my initial proposal, overabundant patience, and constant encouragement, neither the first nor the second edition of this book would have been completed.
And, of course, I am extremely thankful to Anthony Massa. Anthony’s interest in updating this book with additional materials, new hardware and examples, and a change to the GNU tools came at just the right time. It has been difficult to watch someone else update a first edition that I felt good about ...