Programming Python, Second Edition

Acknowledgments

In addition to the people I mentioned in the first edition’s preface, I’d like to extend appreciation to a few of the people who helped in some way during this second edition project:

• To this book’s first editor, Frank Willison, for overseeing this update, as well as championing the Python cause at O’Reilly and beyond. To this book’s later editor, Laura Lewin, for picking up the ball and lighting necessary fires.

• To Python creator Guido van Rossum for making this stuff fun again.

• To the people who took part in a review of an early draft of this edition: Eric Raymond, Mark Hammond, David Ascher, Tim Peters, and Dave Beazley.

• To Tim O’Reilly and the staff of O’Reilly & Associates, both for producing this book, and supporting open source software in general.

• To the Python community at large, for diligence, hard work, and humor -- both in the early years and today. We’ve come far, but to steal a line from the 1970s: You aint’ seen nothin’ yet.

• And to the students of the many Python classes I have taught, as well as the scores of readers who took the time to send me comments about the first edition; your opinions helped shape this update.

Finally, a few personal notes of thanks. To my children, Michael, Samantha, and Roxanne, for purpose. If they are at all representative of their generation, the future of our species seems in very good hands. You’ll have to pardon me if that sounds proud; with kids like mine, it’s impossible to feel otherwise.

And most of all to Lisa, ...