Erlang Book - again

[ke han]

On Aug 29, 2006, at 11:40 PM, Joe Armstrong ((TN/EAB)) wrote:

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> For those who are interested I have started writing a new book.
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I'm sure many of us will buy copies...

As there are no shortage of opinions on what could go into such a  
book, I'll add my wish list / opinions on scope and style ;-)

1 - "beta books", as done with Pragmatic Programmer is fantastic!!!   
You buy the book while its being written, there are online forums for  
feedback and errata...The customer can go online and regenerate a PDF  
at any time from the latest work in progress...the PDFs contain a  
footnote on each page showing the customer name as to hopefully avoid  
"sharing" of the e-book.  The latest Prag Pogrammer book Agile  
Programming in Rails is very well written; structure and content.   
Have you talked to Prag Prog about publishing?
2 - don't confuse the reader (or thicken the book) with too many  
alternative options and outdated programming style.  Go with current  
best practice only...this goes for things like which functions in OTP  
are best, using the latest exception handling and not bothering to  
explain how it used to work, using plain_fsm instead of (or at least  
in addition to)  gen_server or gen_fsm (I feel erlang looses lots of  
adopters when they go from reading the initial old erlang book which  
shows the simplicity of writing interacting processes and then this  
new erlanger starts to write gen_server and gen_fsm modules which  
have an implementation style which does does not map closely to what  
they just learned..
3 - will the book try to cover telecom example apps or web 2.0 app  
examples?  or both?  maybe if its both, it should be a 2 or 3 book  
series instead one monster book.  book 1: erlang, book 2: OTP, book  
3: "erlang best practices" or "erlang by example".

some of these thoughts are in response to a contents list you  
published a few months ago.  I won't dig it up and critic it as I'm  
sure its evolved since then.  But I do remember feeling that less  
than half the contents appealed to me.  This isn't too much of a  
problem as I have bought many tech books simply for one chapter of  
interest.

thanks, ke han

>
> /Joe
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> From: owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED [mailto:owner-erlang- 
> questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of Dmitrii Dimandt
> Sent: den 29 augusti 2006 17:26
> To: Erlang-Questions Mailing List
> Subject: Erlang Book - again
>
> What are the chances of "Concurrent Programming in Erlang" book  
> becoming available online in its entirety?
>
> Why I'm asking this is that the book is clearly out of print (see  
> Amazon here and here). The only available books are available at  
> ridiculous prices.
>
> Practical Common Lisp has been online forever, it seems. And the  
> publisher gave the author perennial rights to publish the book on  
> the web.
> Moreover, Paul Graham's "On Lisp" is now also available for download.
>
> May be Prentice Hall could be forced into giving the rights to the  
> book back to its authors? And may be the authors could be persuaded  
> to create an online copy of it? :)
>
> Or, better still, may be the authors could be persuaded to write a  
> new book :)

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