Acknowledgments

Many people helped me to make this book a reality and I am grateful to all of them. First, I would like to thank Bjarne Stroustroup for designing this wonderful and powerful programming language. We owe it all to him.

Next, I would like to thank Timothy Budd, Tom Cargill, Jim Coplien, Cay Horstmann, Ivor Horton, Bertrand Meyer, Scott Meyers, and Stephen Prata. They wrote programming books that have helped me to develop my own vision of C++ programming.

I am indebted to my students at Boston University and to participants in professional development seminars and on-site training courses that I have taught. Their questions and concerns helped me understand what works and what does not work in teaching C++.

At Boston University, my sincere thanks go to Tanya (Stoyanka) Zlateva, Jay Halfond, and Dennis Berkey. I am grateful for their faith in this project. By giving me the time to complete it, they made this book possible.

I would like to acknowledge the work of technical reviewers Steve Glass, Dan Costello, and C. L. Tondo. Their efforts purged the book of many embarrassing mistakes that I myself did not notice.

At Prentice Hall, I would like to thank the book's development editor, Jim Markham, for his help and encouragement. It was Jim who first told me that my writing was of good quality despite the fact that English is not my first language. He also prodded me not to go off on tangents of soul searching but to stick to the schedule instead. He almost succeeded.

I would also like to thank Jan Schwartz, the Prentice Hall production editor, and her copyediting staff who patiently struggled with my Russian way of using articles and prepositions and made the book sound like English.

Most and foremost, I would like to thank Tim Moore, my Prentice Hall acquisitions editor. He found time to listen to my proposal, had imagination to believe me, and had enthusiasm to tell everybody in sight that this was going to be a great book. If it were not for Tim, this book would never have happened. Thanks, Tim, your efforts are very much appreciated!

I am grateful to my family who encouraged me, admired me, and let me do my writing without distracting me too much with the mundane needs of running the household. The last detail is particularly important: While I was writing this book, my wife was writing hers. I also encouraged her, admired her, and let her do her writing without distracting her too much from the mundane needs of running the household.

Last, but not least, I would like to acknowledge the late Senator Henry M. Jackson (D, Washington) and Representative Charles Vanik (D, Ohio), the authors of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that linked human rights with foreign trade benefits, which is under fire from many quarters. I am one of the fortunate people whose life was affected by this linkage. Because of this, the difference between freedom and bondage is an immediate personal experience for me rather than a nice, but abstract, concept. And for that I am very grateful.