Writing a book is a family affair, and I couldn’t have succeeded without the support of both my real family and my surrogate family at No Starch Press. First, thanks to my wife, Hannah, and daughters, Sarah and Lora, for their understanding, patience, and endless editing support.
At No Starch, thanks to Bill Pollock and Tyler Ortman for accepting my proposal; Zach Lebowski for making sense of what I was trying to say; Janelle Ludowise for a highly professional job of production editing; Rachel Monaghan and Paula Fleming for taking on the difficult job of copyediting and proofing a technical book; David Van Ness for composition; and Serena Yang and Josh Ellingson for the awesome cover design. Thanks also to my technical reviewers, Jeremy Kun, Michael Contraveos, and Michele Pratusevich, for significantly improving the book with invaluable suggestions and corrections.
External to No Starch, Sarah Vaughan, Eric Evenchick, Xiao-Hui Wu, Brooks Clark, Brian Proett, Brent Francis, and Glenn Krum provided significant technical support.
Finally, thanks to Mark Nathern for introducing me to Python, and to Guido van Rossum for inventing the thing in the first place!