Acknowledgments

As with any new undertaking, you never know what you’re getting yourself into when you write a book for the first time. Fortunately, we had a great team at Manning to guide us through the process and help us create something we can be proud of. We would like to thank everyone involved in the production of this book. Particular thanks go to our development editor, Cynthia Kane, who put up with late-night telephone conferences and kept our motivation high. Our copy editor, Andy Carroll, did a marvelous job of tightening up our prose, and he picked up a number of ambiguities and inconsistencies.

We hope that everything in this book is 100 percent accurate, but that would have been difficult to achieve without Burt Beckwith’s eagle eyes. He kept us honest, picking up technical errors and ambiguities. We’d also like to thank our reviewers for taking the time to send detailed feedback on the manuscript at various stages in its development: Josh Reed, Paul Stusiak, Bill Fly, Kenneth DeLong, Lester Lobo, Peter Johnson, Robert O’Connor, Joe McTee, Jonas Bandi, Tim Moore, Carol McDonald, Dave Klein, Doug Warren, Gordon Dickens, John Guthrie, John G. Ledo, Kenrick Chien, Lee Butts, Mark Eagle, Paul King, Robert Fletcher, and Zan Thrash.

The early MEAP subscribers also did a sterling job of pointing out typos, grammatical errors, confusing explanations, and other issues. Possibly more important to us was all the positive feedback we received from them, which helped keep our spirits up.

Thanks also to Dierk König for his encouragement and for agreeing to write the foreword to our book. And last, but not least, we would like to thank Graeme Rocher for producing such a wonderful framework that has made software development fun again.

GLEN SMITH

When I was a kid, one of my mentors, Paul Le Lievre, said to me, “Glen, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. It’s only free because someone else pays.” That’s good advice. Someone always pays. And the main person who paid for this book to happen was my amazing and long-suffering wife, Kylie. For over 12 months, she lived the life of a “book widow”—basically single-parenting my beautiful children and putting up with my grumpy and stressed manner as Grails in Action was born. Matie, you are the best! Consider this book a voucher for unlimited childcare-free weekends redeemable at your leisure. Bubble bath will be supplied.

My beautiful children, Isaac and Zoe, also paid a hefty price for this tome. Love you guys so much. Daddy is home, and months of extended bike rides and endless cuddles await!

Both my parents, Alby and Jan Smith, and parents-in-law, Steve and Joy Salter, have been a great encouragement for this project and a great help with childcare. Thanks for your support!

Jo Giddings, my line manager, made the way for this book to happen, generously allowing reduced work hours to let this vision run. Dean Macaulay has been covering me at work while constantly encouraging me to get this project done. You guys are awesome!

Sven Haiges, my co-host on the Grails podcast (grailspodcast.com), has been a great promoter of this project and continued to put up with my terrible mixing skills and crazy time-zone compromises in the final stages of this book. Bring on the next 100 shows, buddy!

A lot of these chapters were drafted during lunch hours at my local cafe, The Tea Caddy, which let me take up table space for very extended periods (and which makes the best BLTs in Canberra). Thanks guys!

Finally, Peter Ledbrook, my coauthor, was a calm voice of encouragement when I was drowning in an ever-growing to-do list. He’s a very humble and low-profile guy who is always willing to help without any kind of bravado or drama. He knows more about Grails than any non-Graeme person and has written all the technically challenging stuff in this book. He’s become a real friend over the course of this project, and it’s much better for his partnership.

PETER LEDBROOK

First and foremost, I would like to thank my coauthor, Glen Smith, whose energy and enthusiasm know no bounds. Writing this book was a tough endeavor, and without his optimism and encouragement, it would have been even tougher.

My friend Linda Jordan deserves special mention for her invaluable advice on how to write, for providing an ear when I needed one, and for telling me to just get on with it. Thanks also to my parents for feeding and looking after me whenever I needed a time out.

I would like to thank the folks at G2One/SpringSource for allowing me the time to work on the book and for providing a job that meant I could work with Grails full time. May the Groovy and Grails juggernaut continue to roll!