Acknowledgements
First, thanks to associates who have worked with me to give seminars, provide consulting, and develop teaching projects: Andrea Provaglio, Dave Bartlett, Bill Venners, Chuck Allison, Jeremy Meyer, and Larry O’Brien. I appreciate your patience as I continue to try to develop the best model for independent folks like us to work together.
Recently, no doubt because of the Internet, I have become associated with a surprisingly large number of people who assist me in my endeavors, usually working from their own home offices. In the past, I would have had to pay for a pretty big office space to accommodate all these folks, but because of the net and Fedex and occasionally the telephone, I’m able to benefit from their help without the extra costs. In my attempts to learn to better “play well with others,” you have all been very helpful, and I hope to continue learning how to make my own work better through the efforts of others. Paula Steuer has been invaluable in taking over my haphazard business practices and making them sane (thanks for prodding me when I don’t want to do something, Paula). Jonathan Wilcox, Esq., has sifted through my corporate structure and turned over every possible rock that might hide scorpions, and frog-marched us through the process of putting everything straight, legally. Thanks for your care and persistence. Sharlynn Cobaugh (who discovered Paula) has made herself an expert in sound processing and an essential part of creating the multimedia training CD ROMs, as well as tackling other problems. Thanks for your perseverance when faced with intractable computer problems. Evan Cofsky ([email protected]) has become an essential part of my development process, taking to the Python programming language like a duck (Hmm. Such a mixed metaphor could produce a fat Python) and solving all kinds of difficult problems, including the (final?) re-architecting of BackTalk into an email-driven XML database. The folks at Amaio in Prague have helped me out with several projects. Daniel Will-Harris was the original work-by-Internet inspiration, and he is of course fundamental to all my design solutions.
Thanks to the Doyle Street Cohousing Community for putting up with me for the two years that it took me to write the first edition of this book (and for putting up with me at all). Thanks very much to Kevin and Sonda Donovan for subletting their great place in gorgeous Crested Butte, Colorado for the summer while I worked on the first edition of the book (and to Kevin for all the great remodeling on my place in CB). Also thanks to the friendly residents of Crested Butte and the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory who make me feel so welcome. My yoga teachers in CB, Maria and Brenda, were instrumental in keeping me sane during the development of the 3rd edition.
Camp4 Coffee in Crested Butte, Colorado has become the standard hangout when teachers have come up to give seminars, and during seminar breaks it is the best and cheapest catering I’ve ever had. Thanks to my buddy Al Smith for creating it and making it such a great place, and for being such an interesting and entertaining part of the Crested Butte experience.
Thanks to Claudette Moore at Moore Literary Agency for her tremendous patience and perseverance in getting me exactly what I wanted. Thanks to Paul Petralia at Prentice Hall for continuing to give me what I want, and for going out of his way to make things run smoothly for me (and for putting up with all my special requirements).
My first two books were published with Jeff Pepper as editor at Osborne/McGraw-Hill. Jeff appeared at the right place and the right time at Prentice Hall to lay the original groundwork for these books, before passing the responsibility on to Paul. Thanks, Jeff.
Thanks to Rolf André Klaedtke (Switzerland); Martin Vlcek, Vlada & Pavel Lahoda, (Prague); and Marco Cantu (Italy) for hosting me on my first self-organized European seminar tour.
Thanks to Gen Kiyooka and his company Digigami, who graciously provided my Web server for the first several years of my presence on the Web. This was an invaluable learning aid.
Special thanks to Larry and Tina O’Brien, who helped turn my seminar into the first edition of the Hands-On Java CD ROM. (You can find out more at www.BruceEckel.com.)
Certain open-source tools have proved invaluable during my development process and I am very grateful to the creators every time I use these. Cygwin (https://www.cygwin.com) has solved innumerable problems for me that Windows can’t/won’t and I become more attached to it each day (if I only had this 15 years ago when my brain was still hard-wired with Gnu Emacs). CVS and Ant have become essential to my Java development process and I couldn’t go back now. I’ve even become fond of JUnit (https://www.junit.org) now that they’ve actually made it “the simplest thing that could possibly work.” IBM’s Eclipse (https://www.eclipse.org) is a truly wonderful contribution to the development community, and I expect to see great things from it as it continues to evolve (how did IBM become hip? I must have missed a memo). Linux was used daily during the development process, especially by the interns. And of course, if I don’t say it enough everywhere else, I use Python (www.Python.org) constantly to solve problems, the brainchild of my buddy Guido Van Rossum and the goofy geniuses at PythonLabs with whom I spent a few great days doing XP on Zope 3 (Tim, I’ve now framed that mouse you borrowed, officially named the “TimMouse”). You guys need to find healthier places to eat lunch. (Also, thanks to the entire Python community, an amazing bunch of people).
Lots of people sent in corrections and I am indebted to them all, but particular thanks go to (for the first edition): Kevin Raulerson (found tons of great bugs), Bob Resendes (simply incredible), John Pinto, Joe Dante, Joe Sharp (all three were fabulous), David Combs (many grammar and clarification corrections), Dr. Robert Stephenson, John Cook, Franklin Chen, Zev Griner, David Karr, Leander A. Stroschein, Steve Clark, Charles A. Lee, Austin Maher, Dennis P. Roth, Roque Oliveira, Douglas Dunn, Dejan Ristic, Neil Galarneau, David B. Malkovsky, Steve Wilkinson, and a host of others. Prof. Ir. Marc Meurrens put in a great deal of effort to publicize and make the electronic version of the first edition of the book available in Europe.
Thanks to those who helped me rewrite the examples to use the Swing library (for the 2nd edition), and for other assistance: Jon Shvarts, Thomas Kirsch, Rahim Adatia, Rajesh Jain, Ravi Manthena, Banu Rajamani, Jens Brandt, Nitin Shivaram, Malcolm Davis, and everyone who expressed support.
There have been a spate of smart technical people in my life who have become friends and have also been both influential and unusual in that they do yoga and practice other forms of spiritual enhancement, which I find quite inspirational and instructional. They are Kraig Brockschmidt, Gen Kiyooka, and Andrea Provaglio (who helps in the understanding of Java and programming in general in Italy, and now in the United States as an associate of the MindView team).
It’s not that much of a surprise to me that understanding Delphi helped me understand Java, since there are many concepts and language design decisions in common. My Delphi friends provided assistance by helping me gain insight into that marvelous programming environment. They are Marco Cantu (another Italian—perhaps being steeped in Latin gives one aptitude for programming languages?), Neil Rubenking (who used to do the yoga/vegetarian/Zen thing until he discovered computers), and of course Zack Urlocker (Delphi product manager), a long-time pal whom I’ve traveled the world with.
My friend Richard Hale Shaw’s insights and support have been very helpful (and Kim’s, too). Richard and I spent many months giving seminars together and trying to work out the perfect learning experience for the attendees.
The book design, cover design, and cover photo were created by my friend Daniel Will-Harris, noted author and designer (www.Will-Harris.com), who used to play with rub-on letters in junior high school while he awaited the invention of computers and desktop publishing, and complained of me mumbling over my algebra problems. However, I produced the camera-ready pages myself, so the typesetting errors are mine. Microsoft® Word XP for Windows was used to write the book and to create camera-ready pages in Adobe Acrobat; the book was created directly from the Acrobat PDF files. As a tribute to the electronic age, I happened to be overseas when the final version of the first and second editions of the book was produced—the first edition was sent from Capetown, South Africa and the second edition was posted from Prague. The third was from Crested Butte, Colorado. The body typeface is Georgia and the headlines are in Verdana. The cover typeface is ITC Rennie Mackintosh.
A special thanks to all my teachers and all my students (who are my teachers as well). The most fun writing teacher was Gabrielle Rico (author of Writing the Natural Way, Putnam, 1983). I’ll always treasure the terrific week at Esalen.
My sweetie Dawn McGee took the back cover photo, and makes me smile that way.
The supporting cast of friends includes, but is not limited to: Andrew Binstock, Steve Sinofsky, JD Hildebrandt, Tom Keffer, Brian McElhinney, Brinkley Barr, Bill Gates at Midnight Engineering Magazine, Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood, Greg Perry, Dan Putterman, Christi Westphal, Gene Wang, Dave Mayer, David Intersimone, Andrea Rosenfield, Claire Sawyers, more Italians (Laura Fallai, Corrado, Ilsa, and Cristina Giustozzi), Chris and Laura Strand, the Almquists, Brad Jerbic, Marilyn Cvitanic, the Mabrys, the Haflingers, the Pollocks, Peter Vinci, the Robbins Families, the Moelter Families (and the McMillans), Michael Wilk, Dave Stoner, Laurie Adams, the Cranstons, Larry Fogg, Mike and Karen Sequeira, Gary Entsminger and Allison Brody, Kevin Donovan and Sonda Eastlack, Chester and Shannon Andersen, Joe Lordi, Dave and Brenda Bartlett, Patti Gast, the Rentschlers, the Sudeks, Dick, Patty, and Lee Eckel, Lynn and Todd, and their families. And of course, Mom and Dad.
