vAcknowledgments
With this being our third edition, we find ourselves used to saying this. It always needs to be said,
though: Books are not created by authors alone. They are shepherded into existence by a community
of collaborators, risk-takers, and other supporters, without whom the burden of comprehending and
writing all this material would be crippling.
- Brian Hardy, who, along with Bill, had the gusto to bring the very first edition of this book into
the world. From nothing, Brian and Bill made something great. - Our co-instructors and members of our Android development team: Andrew Lunsford, Bolot
Kerimbaev, Brian Gardner, David Greenhalgh, Josh Skeen, Matt Compton, Paul Turner, and
Rashad Cureton. (Soon, Rashad. Soon.) They taught everything in this book before it was
polished enough to be presentable and gave us many invaluable suggestions and corrections. Most
people live their entire lives without ever working with such a talented and entertaining crew.
They make work at Big Nerd Ranch an everyday joy. - Special thanks to Andrew, who went through the entire book and updated all the Android Studio
screenshots. We appreciate his thoroughness, attention to detail, and acerbic wit. - Zack Simon, our fantastically talented and soft-spoken Big Nerd Ranch designer. Unbeknownst
to us, Zack went behind our backs and updated the nifty cheat sheet you can find attached to this
book. If you enjoy that sheet, you should find Zack and tell him so yourself. But we will also
thank Zack right here: Thanks, Zack! - Kar Loong Wong, for his work redesigning the crime list screen. The more help we get from Kar,
the better the apps in this book look. Thanks, Kar. - Mark Dalrymple, who reviewed our constraint layout coverage for accuracy and wonderfulness. If
you happen to run into Mark, ask him to review your constraint layout coverage. He is so good at
doing that! But if you have none, ask him to make balloon animals for you instead. - Thanks to Aaron Hillegass. As a practical matter, it is not possible to do this work without Big
Nerd Ranch, the company Aaron founded. Thank you. - Our editor, Elizabeth Holaday. The famous beat author William S. Burroughs sometimes wrote by
cutting up his work into little pieces, throwing them in the air, and publishing the rearrangement.
Without a strong editor like Liz, our confusion and simpleminded excitement may have caused
us to resort to such techniques. We are thankful that she was there to impose focus, precision, and
clarity on our drafts. - Ellie Volckhausen, who designed our cover.
- Anna Bentley, our copyeditor, and Simone Payment, our proofreader. Thank you both for sanding
away the remaining rough edges of this book. - Chris Loper at IntelligentEnglish.com, who designed and produced the print and ebook versions
of the book. His DocBook toolchain made life much easier, too.