Acknowledgments

Shortly after the unveiling of .NET in the summer of 2000, John Osborn from O'Reilly and I started discussing a book that would explore the uses of .NET as a component-based application development platform. The first edition of the book was the result of John's sponsorship and support. Over the last three years I have worked closely with Microsoft as part of the Strategic Design Review process for .NET 2.0, which has provided me with experience and insight into the making of .NET 2.0. I am grateful to the following product and project managers: Dan Fernandez and Eric Gunnerson from the C# team, Amanda Silver from the Visual Basic team, John Rivard from the CLR team, and Matt Tavis and Yasser Shohoud from the Indigo team. Special thanks to Anson Horton, a C# program manager, for his insight, amazing expertise, and guidance.

The following friends and colleagues helped with the first edition of the book: Chris W. Rea, Billy Hollis, Jimmy Nilsson, Nicholas Paldino, Ingo Rammer, and Pradeep Tapadiya. The following provided valuable feedback for the second edition: Sam Gentile, Richard Grimes, Norman Headlam, Benjamin Mitchell, and Brian Noyes. All of them gave generously of their time. In particular, I am grateful to Nicholas Paldino for his help with the second edition. Nick's knowledge of the framework is unsurpassed, and his meticulous attention to details contributed greatly to the quality and cohesiveness of this book.

Finally, my family. Many thanks to my wife Dana, who knows all too well that writing a book entails time away from the family but still encourages me to write. I dedicate this book to my five-year-old daughter Abigail. She has her own computer now, where she enthusiastically plays her Princesses games. I am waiting for the day I can talk with her about the principles of building systems and services out of components. I think I am going to start with interfaces.