Acknowledgments

Without all the people who contributed to the creation of Visual Basic .NET, this book would not have been possible. In particular, my thanks go to the core group of people who worked together with me to come up with the language design for Visual Basic .NET, and especially Alan Carter, Sam Spencer, John Hamby, and Cameron McColl. They all managed to stick it out through what was often a long and extremely difficult transition from Visual Basic to Visual Basic .NET. Without their tireless work and passion for the product, we never would have made it.

Thanks also go to the larger Visual Basic .NET team, who translated the language designs into reality, and to the C# team, our partners in crime (as it were). Thank go especially to Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Golde, and Scott Wiltamuth, who all provided valuable insight into language design from a decidedly different vantage point. The CLR and .NET Framework teams also played an invaluable role in bringing Visual Basic .NET to fruition, and many thanks are due to the efforts of Brad Abrams and Jim Miller, who patiently spent many an hour explaining some aspect or another of the new platform!

This book itself would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support and enduring patience of Stephane Thomas and Michael Mullen at Addison-Wesley, and the editing skills of Martin Heller. Thanks go to Ken Getz, Amit Kalani, Rex Jaeschke, Rocky Lhotka, David Vitter, Phillip Williams, Ethan Roberts, Joe Hummel, and Klaus Probst for their willingness to review the book and offer helpful and enlightening comments and suggestions. And there would have been no way that I would have been able to complete the book without the willingness of Julia Liuson and Paul Kuklinski to give me time to work on it (and to understand when other things didn't necessarily get done on time!).

And finally, none of this would have been possible without the love and support of my family, especially my wife, Andrea. I can never thank them enough.