FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank Aaron, Rick, and Talbott for swooping in at the last second, carving off chunks of the vastly-overwhelming "TODO" list remaining to me, and knocking them off with nary a complaint or challenge. You guys have been a delight to work with. A tip of the hat must also go to Don Syme, Luke Hoban, Chris Smith, and the others on the F# team, who patiently answered stupid question after stupid question. Thanks must also go out to the various attendees who've listened to me prattle on about F#, both those who knew more about the subject than I, as well as those who knew less — all of you have been extremely helpful in honing the delivery of the answer to the question, "What is F#, why do I care, and how do I use it?" Matt Podwysocki in particular gets a hearty kudo for helping me understand some of the thornier functional concepts, and Kevin Hazzard gets one just for being himself.

Lastly, no book gets written without a support structure, and in this case, that structure consists principally of my wife, Charlotte, who patiently endured night after night of "I promise I'll be home by midnight" and wound up waiting for me 'til 3 or 4 AM, just to hear how my day (er... night) went. Hon, you deserved much better than me, but I'll never tell, on the off chance that you haven't figured it out yet.

—Ted Neward

I WOULD LIKE TO thank, my wife, my kids, and my professional colleagues for their support through this process. Of course, a hearty thanks goes to the folks at Wrox who have been very patient along the way, especially during those times where billable consulting time conflicted with book writing time. Of course, without all the great people in the F# community, this book would not have happened. Particular thanks goes to Alex Pedenko, who helped me vet the Relational Record Mapper concept, nicely extending the work I started in the data chapter.

—Aaron C. Erickson

I WOULD LIKE TO thank my family, especially my wife Pradeepa and two sons, Tristan and William, for their support and patience while I worked on this book. I would also like to thank my parents and siblings who have also been major supporting factors in my life. I would like to extend my gratitude toward my co-authors, Ted Neward, Aaron Erickson, and Rick Minerich for their dedication to getting this book published, Michael de la Maza for spearheading the F# User Group, Don Syme and Microsoft Research for their brilliant work creating F#, plus Luke Hoban and the Microsoft product team for bringing F# into Visual Studio as part of the product.

—Talbott Crowell

NO AMOUNT OF THANKS to my co-authors would be enough. Ted, for bringing vision and leadership to this project. Aaron, for his frequent advice on dealing with the many small dramas of the authoring and consulting world. Talbott, for recommending me for this project and for being my New England F# brother-in-arms. I'd also like to thank Michael de la Maza who came up with the idea to start a New England F# User Group, everyone at Atalasoft for supporting me in this and my parents for cheering me up when the pressures seemed worst. Finally, I'd like to thank the F# community; each of you proves the superiority of statically-typed functional programming on a daily basis.

—Richard Minerich