Acknowledgments

My heartfelt thanks to everybody who helped me out on this book. Many Python beginners, practitioners, and experts have read drafts of parts of the book and have given me feedback to help make it clearer and more precise, accurate, and readable. Out of those, for the quality and quantity of their feedback, I must single out for special thanks Andrea Babini, Andrei Raevsky, Anna Ravenscroft, and my fellow Python Business Forum board members Jacob Hallén and Laura Creighton.

Some Python experts gave me indispensable help in specific areas: Aahz on threading, Itamar Shtull-Trauring on Twisted, Mike Orr on Cheetah, Eric Jones and Paul Dubois on Numeric, and Tim Peters on threading, testing, performance issues, and optimization.

I was also blessed with a wonderful group of technical reviewers: Fred Drake of Python Labs, co-author of Python & XML (O'Reilly) and Grand Poobah of Python's excellent free documentation; Magnus Lie Hetland, author of Practical Python (Apress); Steve Holden, author of Python Web Programming (New Riders); and last but not least Sue Giller, whose observations as a sharp-eyed, experienced, non-Pythonista programmer were particularly useful in the pursuit of clarity and precision. The book's editor, Paula Ferguson, went above and beyond the call of duty in her work to make this book clearer and more readable.

My family and friends have been patient and supportive throughout the time it took me to write this book: particular thanks for that to my children Flavia and Lucio, my partner Marina, my sister Elisabetta, and my father Lanfranco.