When writing this book, I was fortunate to work with an excellent team at Packt Publishing Ltd, whose contributions vastly improved the presentation of this book. David Barnes helped me to transform the idea into the final book and to give my first steps working with the Beginner's Guide. Rajashree Hamine made everything easier with her incredible time management. Shilpa Dube helped me realize my vision for this book and provided many sensible suggestions regarding the text, the format, and the flow. The reader will notice her excellent work. Rakesh Shejwal made the sentences, the paragraphs, and the code easier to read and to understand. He has added great value to the final drafts.

I would like to thank my technical reviewers Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi, Jerry L. Spohn, and Ron Steckly and proofreaders Chris Smith and Ron Steckly, for their thorough reviews and insightful comments. I was able to incorporate some of the knowledge and wisdom they have gained in their many years in the software development industry. The examples and the code include the great feedback provided by Bogdan Brinzarea. Bogdan helped me a lot to include better and shorter code to simplify the learning process.

I wish to acknowledge Hector A. Algarra, who always helped me to improve my writing.

Special thanks go to my wife, Vanesa S. Olsen, my son Kevin, my nephew, Nicolas, my father, Jose Carlos, who acted as a great sounding board and participated in many hours of technical discussions, my sister, Silvina, who helped me when my grammar was confusing, and my mother Susana. They always supported me during the production of this book.