Throughout my career, a lot of people in the software development community have been truly nice to me. I want to use this opportunity to thank them for their help and understanding. I hope I haven't left anybody out.
1. Aaron Hillegass. Aaron teaches the Cocoa Bootcamp that I thoroughly enjoyed when I attended it years ago. He helped me get started with Cocoa, and we've been friends ever since.
2. Matt Neuburg. We've known each other for many years, at least through email exchanges, because of the programming books we each wrote. Matt's been very kind to answer questions I'm hesitant to ask on the Cocoa-dev mailing list because I think they may be too dumb (and my suspicions are probably right) or the answer should be obvious to me.
3. Real Software. I've used a dozen programming languages throughout the years ever since I started working on my Ph.D., and I've created Mac software for 20 years with a variety of programming languages (including LabVIEW, C/C++ and Objective-C). I always preferred Mac programming over Windows programming, but didn't always have the option of working solely on the Mac. The college where I was teaching was standardized on Windows, but I couldn't live without Mac versions of my programs too. Real Studio allowed me to quickly create cross-platform apps for research and teaching. I rarely needed to resort to Visual Studio.
While I've now focused on Cocoa programming, I still have lots of fun with Real Studio. Real Software recently gave me a free license renewal through their Applications for Income Program. I can't thank them enough.
4. Christian Schmitz. Christian makes the Monkeybread plugins for Real Studio. They add almost 40,000 methods, dozens of classes and class extensions to Real Studio. I'm amazed that he can keep adding improvements to them! Several of my cross-platform programs would have not been possible without them. I can state emphatically that if you're a Real Studio programmer, you'd be crazy not to buy them.
5. Kevin Callahan. Kevin makes the incredible Accessorizer. He's put up with my questions and gripes without writing back in all caps.