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| Preface |

## Acknowledgments

Many people contributed to putting this book together under a schedule that became increasingly rushed as time passed. Thanks to their efforts, we gave birth to something we can all be proud of.

Foremost we would like to thank Tim O'Reilly for giving us the opportunity to write this book. Special thanks to Mike Loukides, the series editor, whose endless patience and experience got us through the difficult parts and to Paula Ferguson, whose organizational and editing abilities got the material into its final form. It's due largely to Mike and Paula's tireless efforts that this book has gotten to you as quickly as it has. We could not have asked for a more skillful or responsive team of people with whom to work.

Particular thanks are due to our technical reviewers: Andrew Cohen, Eric Raymond, and Lisa Farley. All of them gave thorough reviews that were invaluable in assembling the final draft. Eric contributed many bits of text that eventually found their way into the book.

Speaking of borrowings, the original version of the glossary came from David Flanagan's book, Java in a Nutshell. We also borrowed the class hierarchy diagrams from David's book. These diagrams were based on similar diagrams by Charles L. Perkins. His original diagrams are available at http://rendezvous.com/java/.

Thanks also to Marc Wallace and Steven Burkett for reading the book in progress. As for the crowd in St. Louis: a special thanks to LeeAnn Langdon of the Library Ltd. and Kerri Bonasch. Deepest thanks to Victoria Doerr for her patience and love. Finally, thanks for the support of the "lunch" crowd: Karl "Gooch" Stefvater, Bryan "Butter" O'Connor, Brian "Brian" Gottlieb, and the rest of the clan at Washington University.

Many people in O'Reilly's production and design groups contributed their blood, sweat, and tears to the project. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was production editor and copy editor, and had the stress-filled job of working under a very tight deadline with chapters arriving asynchronously (which means at random and later than expected). Seth Maislin wrote the index, and Stephen Spainhour adapted David Flanagan's glossary for this book. Chris Reilley converted rough diagrams into professional technical illustrations. Erik Ray, Ellen Siever, and Lenny Muellner converted HTML files into SGML and made sure we could convert electrons into paper without mishap. Lenny also implemented a new design for this book, which was created by Nancy Priest. Hanna Dyer created the back cover; Edie Freedman designed the front cover.

Conventions Used in This Book |  | Yet Another Language?