Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many, many family members, colleagues, mentors, and

students.
Throughout the last 29 years of coordinating and teaching the basic computa-
tion courses for the College of Engineering at Boston University, I have been
blessed with many fabulous students as well as graduate teaching fellows
and undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs). There have been hundreds of
TAs over the years, too many to name individually, but I thank them all for their
support. In particular, the following TAs were very helpful in reviewing drafts of
the original manuscript and subsequent editions and suggesting examples: Edy
Tan, Megan Smith, Brandon Phillips, Carly Sherwood, Ashmita Randhawa,
Kevin Ryan, Brian Hsu, Paul Vermilion, Ben Duong, Carlton Duffett, and Raaid
Arshad. Kevin Ryan wrote the MATLAB scripts that were used to produce the
cover illustrations. Vincent Barilla and Isabella Passaro helped proofread and
created problems for the new chapter on OOP for this edition. Carlton and
Raaid have been particularly helpful over the last couple of years and have
developed many companion Cody Coursework problems.
A number of colleagues have been very encouraging throughout the years.
In particular, I would like to thank Tom Bifano and Ron Roy for their support
and motivation. I am also indebted to my mentors at Boston University, Bill
Henneman of the Computer Science Department and Merrill Ebner of the
Department of Manufacturing Engineering as well as Bob Cannon from the
University of South Carolina.
I would like to thank all of the reviewers of the proposal and drafts of this book.
Their comments have been extremely helpful, and I hope I have incorporated
their suggestions to their satisfaction. They include: Dr. Montasir Abbas,
Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech; Dr Ruijun Bu, Senior Lecturer, University
of Liverpool; Dr. Antonio H. Costa, Professor, University of Massachusetts,
Dartmouth; Dr. Patrick Flaherty, Assistant Professor, University of Massachu-
setts, Amherst; Dr. Daniel Fridline. Assistant Professor, SUNY Maritime
College; Dr. Matthias Krauledat, Professor, Hochschule Rhein-Waal; xxi
xxii Acknowledgments

Dr. Roman Kuc, Professor, Yale University; Dr. Matthew A. Lackner, Associate
Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Ryan Patrick, Lecturer,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Alison Pechenick, Senior Lecturer, The Univer-
sity of Vermont; Dr. Charles Riedesel, Professor, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln; Dr. Daniel F. Ryder, Jr., Associate Professor, Tufts University; Cheryl
Schlittler, Instructor, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; Dr. Geoffrey
Shiflett, Associate Professor, University of Southern California; Dr. Hossein
Tavana, Assistant Professor, University of Akron; Shaikh Md Rubayiat Tousif,
Instructor, The University of Texas at Arlington; Phillip Wong, Lab Coordina-
tor, Portland State University; and Dr. Vladislav V. Yakovlev, Professor, Texas
A&M University.
Also, I thank those at Elsevier who helped to make this book possible including:
Todd Green, Publisher; Stephen Merken, Acquisitions Editor; Nate McFadden,
Sr. Developmental Editor; and Sujatha Thirugnana Sambandam, Production
Project Manager.
Finally, thanks go to all of my family, especially my parents Roy Attaway and
Jane Conklin, both of whom encouraged me at an early age to read and to write.
Thanks also to my husband Ted de Winter for his encouragement and good-
natured taking care of the weekend chores while I worked on this project!
The photo used in the image processing section was taken by Ron Roy.
Stormy Attaway
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Boston University