I want to express my profound gratitude to my parents for their unconditional love and strong support in all my endeavors.

This book arose from an initial discussion with Richard Gall, an acquisition editor at Packt Publishing. Without this initial discussion, this book would never have happened. So, I am grateful to him. The follow ups on discussions and the contractual terms were agreed with Rebecca Youe. I would like to thank her for her support. I would also like to thank Merint Mathew, a content editor who helped me bring this book to the finish line. I am thankful to Merint for his subtle persistence and tactful support during the write ups and revisions of this book.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants. I want to acknowledge some of the giants who helped me shape my thinking. I want to recognize the beauty, elegance, and power of Python as envisioned by Guido van Rossum. My respectful gratitude goes to Matei Zaharia and the team at Berkeley AMP Lab and Databricks for developing a new approach to computing with Spark and Mesos. Travis Oliphant, Peter Wang, and the team at Continuum.io are doing a tremendous job of keeping Python relevant in a fast-changing computing landscape. Thank you to you all.