Final Thoughts

Well, I am glad that you have made it to this page, and I hope that you have gained some wisdom or knowledge in the process. I would like to say that this book is an accumulation of my 15 years in the computer industry, but it is more like hundreds of years with several people contributing. This is because if you total the years of experience of the people that I have learned from and the contributors of this book, I am sure it would be over 150 years. As I stated at the beginning of the book, if you see something that is incorrect or something I missed, please let me know.

Since this book has many sidenotes and/or stories, I would like to leave you with one that has always been one of my favorites:

A father and his young son were walking on a beach, and the tide was so low that there were a lot of starfish exposed and out of the water. The boy asked his father, "Don't the starfish need water to survive?" And the father answered, "Yes. When the tide comes back in, some will make it, and some won't." So the boy ran up to the first exposed starfish, picked it up, carried it to the water, and set it in. The father said, "Son, it's not going to make a difference; there are thousands of starfish exposed out here." The boy replied, "It made a difference to that one." And the boy continued to move as many starfish as he could all the way down the beach.