Codermetrics

Acknowledgments

The ideas in this book were inspired by Michael Lewis’s writing on sabermetrics and sports statistics, which led me to the writing of Bill James. They are the epitome of informed, informative, and entertaining writers. Although they’ll never have a reason to read this book, my initial thanks is to them.

My thanks also goes to all the excellent coders I’ve worked with over the years, and the fine managers and executives. I’ve been very lucky and I can’t really think of a single professional situation where I didn’t learn a tremendous amount. Particular thanks to Wain Kellum, CEO, and the entire team at Vocalocity, who supported my efforts in writing this book.

I want to thank Andy Oram, my editor at O’Reilly, who helped me through this process and to whom a great deal of credit goes for making this far better than it would have been otherwise. It was a pleasure to work with you, Andy. Also, thanks to Mike Hendrickson at O’Reilly who originally supported and encouraged this idea. And to the entire O’Reilly Media production team, thanks, too.

For the feedback and reviews they provided on this book during the process, I want to thank Brian Jackson at Google, Nagaraj Nadendla at Taleo, and Ben Wu at Zuora. They are all excellent leaders and managers themselves. Thanks guys.

To my dad, thanks for giving me a love of sports, which has become a love for statistics too. To my mom, thanks for encouraging me to write a book.

Most of all I want to thank my wife, Barbara, who did the most to support my efforts in writing this book, not the least of which was using her excellent editorial skills to proofread this book, catch a number of flaws, and point out a number of improvements, even though she’s a lawyer so she can’t write a line of code (OK, maybe a line). Thanks honey! And to my two beautiful daughters, Naomi and Vivian, because they make every day special, my loving thanks.