About the Author

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments for the Second Edition

Common sense says that a second edition will only require half as much work as the first edition required. Common sense is wrong.

Even though a large part of this book came directly from the first edition, even that part had to be tweaked and tuned. Every single sentence in this book had to pass through (at the very least) a filter that asked: Is what was true in 2001 still true in 2006? And that, of course, was only the beginning.

In short, I put in many hundreds of hours of work on this second editionnearly as much time as on the first. And yet I am "only the author."

A book is possible only through the teamwork of many people. On the publisher's side, I owe thanks to Debra Williams Cauley, Songlin Qiu, and Mandie Frank for their hard work and infinite patience. Thanks go to Geneil Breeze for her tireless copyediting and picking bits of lint from my English. There are also others I can't name because their work was completely behind the scenes, and I never talked with them.

Technical editing was done primarily by Shashank Date and Francis Hwang. They did a great job, and I appreciate it. Errors that slipped through are my responsibility, of course.

Thanks go to the people who supplied explanations, wrote sample code, and answered numerous questions for me. These include Matz himself (Yukihiro Matsumoto), Dave Thomas, Christian Neukirchen, Chad Fowler, Curt Hibbs, Daniel Berger, Armin Roehrl, Stefan Schmiedl, Jim Weirich, Ryan Davis, Jenny W., Jim Freeze, Lyle Johnson, Martin DeMello, Matt Lawrence, the infamous why the lucky stiff, Ron Jeffries, Tim Hunter, Chet Hendrickson, Nathaniel Talbott, and Bil Kleb.

Special thanks goes to the heavier contributors. Andrew Johnson greatly enhanced my regular expression knowledge. Paul Battley made great contributions to the internationalization chapter. Masao Mutoh added to that same chapter and also contributed material on GTK. Austin Ziegler taught me the secrets of writing PDF files. Caleb Tennis added to the Qt material. Eric Hodel added to the Rinda and Ring material, and James Britt contributed heavily to the web development chapter.

Thanks and appreciation again must go to Matz, not only for his assistance but for creating Ruby in the first place. Domo arigato gozaimasu!

Again I have to thank my parents. They have encouraged me without ceasing and are looking forward to seeing this book. I will make programmers of them both yet.

And once again, I have to thank all of the Ruby community for their tireless energy, productivity, and community spirit. I particularly thank the readers of this book (in both editions). I hope you find it informative, useful, and perhaps even entertaining.

Acknowledgments for the First Edition

Writing a book is truly a team effort; this is a fact I could not fully appreciate until I wrote one myself. I recommend the experience, although it is a humbling one. It is a simple truth that without the assistance of many other people, this book would not have existed.

Thanks and appreciation must first go to Matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto), who created the Ruby language in the first place. Domo arigato gozaimasu!

Thanks goes to Conrad Schneiker for conceiving the overall idea for the book and helping to create its overall structure. He also did me the service of introducing me to the Ruby language in 1999.

Several individuals have contributed material to the body of the book. The foremost of these was Guy Hurst, who wrote substantial parts of the earlier chapters as well as two of the appendices. His assistance was absolutely invaluable.

Thanks also goes to the other contributors, whom I'll name in no particular order. Kevin Smith did a great job on the GTK section of Chapter 6, saving me from a potentially steep learning curve on a tight schedule. Patrick Logan, in the same chapter, shed light on the mysteries of the FOX GUI. Chad Fowler, in Chapter 9, plumbed the depths of XML and also contributed to the CGI section.

Thanks to those who assisted in proofreading or reviewing or in other miscellaneous ways: Don Muchow, Mike Stok, Miho Ogishima, and others already mentioned. Thanks to David Eppstein, the mathematics professor, for answering questions about graph theory.

One of the great things about Ruby is the support of the community. There were many on the mailing list and the newsgroup who answered questions and gave me ideas and assistance. Again in no particular order, these are Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt, Hee-Sob Park, Mike Wilson, Avi Bryant, Yasushi Shoji ("Yashi"), Shugo Maeda, Jim Weirich, "arton," and Masaki Suketa. I'm sorry to say I have probably overlooked someone.

To state the obvious, a book would never be published without a publisher. Many people behind the scenes worked hard to produce this book; primarily I have to thank William Brown, who worked closely with me and was a constant source of encouragement; and Scott Meyer, who delved deeply into the details of putting the material together. Others I cannot even name because I have never heard of them. You know who you are.

I have to thank my parents, who watched this project from a distance, encouraged me along the way, and even bothered to learn a little bit of computer science for my sake.

A writer friend of mine once told me, "If you write a book and nobody reads it, you haven't really written a book." So, finally, I want to thank the reader. This book is for you. I hope it is of some value.