Shared Source CLI Essentials

Acknowledgments

David Stutz

This is my first attempt at a book. Thanks to my wife Beth, who bemusedly watched from her experienced vantage without making too many sarcastic comments, and to those who showed me the details, especially our editors Brian Jepson and John Osborn. I also thank Brian, Geoff, John, and Ted for their patience during occasional personal lacunae induced by two of the truly important things in life: winemaking and music-making.

Special thanks go to those who spent so much effort commenting on drafts, including Jan Kotas, John Norwood, Vladimir Fedorov, Eric Albert, and the rest of the Rotor team: Geoff, Barry, Mario, Stephe, and Pankaj. Jan, Vlad, and Barry kept me from telling outright technical lies (although I’m sure that I’ve slipped a few by them), and John’s detailed review comments were invaluable.

Many of the implementers of Microsoft’s .NET Framework also helped with the task of reviewing the text, including Jim Miller, Chris Brumme, Patrick Dussud, Ian Carmichael, Alan Shi, and George Bosworth. For both reviewing this book, and for transforming our original COM runtime proposal into today’s CLI, thanks!

Microsoft Research provided much help in getting the word out about Rotor. In particular, the Cambridge research lab, run by Roger Needham with the help of his crack University Relations group of Pierre-Yves Saintoyant, Van Eden, and Bruno Quarta, along with Greg O’Shea, were indispensable. Just as important were reviewers and agitators external to Microsoft, including Peter Drayton, Jason Whittington, Jim Bennett, Chris Sells, Gary Nutt, Chris Tavares, and all of our O’Reilly technical reviewers. I’m sure that I’ve missed people here; to any of these, and to the web denizens who sent comments on posted chapters: thanks! We have been looking at Rotor’s code for years, and your externally focused viewpoint helped give us a fresh perspective.

Finally, I’d like to thank Antonio Cisternino, Werner Vogels, Damien Watkins, and Yahya Mirza for helping to move the early Rotor community forward, and Miguel de Icaza for supporting and promoting the CLI standard within the open source community.

Ted Neward

This marks the fourth time I’ve written acknowledgments for a book, and I’m amazed each time at just what a good deal an author gets: people spend hours of sacrifice, dedication, hard work, and effort supporting an author’s endeavors, and in return get their names mentioned in a brief paragraph or two.

I’m tremendously grateful to John Osborn, the .NET editor at O’Reilly & Associates, for introducing me to this project. At dinner one night while teaching in Boston, on the heels of C# in a Nutshell, John asked me if I was interested in speaking with somebody at Microsoft who was looking for an author to write about Rotor. I couldn’t say yes fast enough and spent an anxious week waiting for John to get ahold of David Stutz and introduce the two of us. I flew up to Redmond a week later, met Dave and the rest of the Rotor team, and the results of that meeting rest in your hands. My deepest thanks to John for the opportunity.

To my coauthors, Dave and Geoff, I cannot express in words how much fun I’ve had on this project. I’ve enjoyed working with both of you and the rest of the Rotor team, in ways I never would have predicted.

It seems that every DevelopMentor instructor/author spends at least a sentence or two praising Don Box and Mike Abercrombie for the incredible and wonderful environment they created there; I’m no exception. I have never met a more supportive, technically sharp yet incredibly eloquent group of individuals in my life. Guys, you all humble me. In particular, I want to thank Jason Whittington and Peter Drayton, two guys who’ve labored through the Rotor code with me. If you ever get the chance to hear either one of them speak, do so.

Finally, I owe staggering debts of gratitude to my students, past, present, and future, for listening to (and encouraging!) my rants on technology, challenging me when I needed to be challenged, and exploiting all the weak points in my arguments; my wife Charlotte and my two sons, Michael and Matthew, who surrendered their husband and father to yet another book; and to my father, Lance Neward, who bought that Apple ][+ back in 1978 instead of a new Volvo—no other single decision he has made, aside from marrying my mother, has so dramatically altered my life.

Geoff Shilling

This is my first time writing a book, and what a ride it has been. I wish to express my appreciation to my coauthors, David and Ted, for all their hard work, and to the folks at O’Reilly who were willing to go ahead with this project. To our editors Brian Jepson and John Osborn—I’m still not sure how you put up with us.

We had great help in reviewing and improving the drafts, and I’m very grateful for everyone who gave their time and insight to help us get it right. Barry, Eric, and Jan —thank you for answering the endless series of questions and correcting those misconceptions I had.

Special thanks go to everyone at Microsoft who made Rotor possible in the first place: to Paul Maritz for driving the idea forward, and to Yuval Neeman and David Treadwell for their ongoing support. Thanks to Jeff Ranck, who helped us through the twisty world of licenses and to the entire CLR team who supported us from the start, even if they weren’t quite sure what we were doing with their code. To the team at the Microsoft Research Cambridge University Relations team—Pierre-Yves Saintoyant, Greg O’Shea, Van Eden, and Bruno Quarta, and the head of the lab, Rodger Needham—thank you very much for your support in bringing Rotor to the broader community. And thanks to Jim Miller for his ongoing support for everything Rotor.

To the best team I have ever had the privilege to lead: thank you. Barry Bond, John Norwood, David Stutz, Stephen Walli, Jan Kotas, Eric Albert, Vladimir Fedorov, Mario Chenier, and Pankaj Kakkar—you guys really made Rotor and this book a great experience.

Finally, I wish to thank my wife Ann for supporting me (and tolerating me) throughout this project.