[erlang-questions] Practical Erlang Programming

[Francesco Cesarini]

Hi All,

in line with the comments, which are much appreciated, these are my 
thoughts.

When I walk into a book store, I do not want to see one or two Erlang 
books, I want to see a whole section dedicated to them. Many books on 
basic Erlang, Industrial SW design, Mnesia, OTP, drivers, Concurrent 
Programming, Erlang web applications, Erlang and IM, handbooks, 
cookbooks, and more.

We are not aiming at a book which is of better quality than Joe's, nor 
as a book to replace Joe's. That comment stood out, and I hope I am 
taking it out of context. Those who have met Joe will know his book is a 
reflection of his character and enthusiasm. We see ours as a complement 
for those who want to read more about Erlang in depth.

We are very interested in writing a book on OTP. We have the material 
and the examples which we know work. But we want to do it in the right 
order by first writing a book on Erlang. As none of us has ever written 
a book, starting with Erlang makes sense. From there, we will be better 
prepared to tackle OTP. As everyone says, OTP is much harder to learn 
than Erlang. I can add that the same applies to teaching and explaining 
it. I am sure this can be extended to writing about it.

Our hope is not to preach to the converted and sell books to everyone 
who already is on this mailing list. We are instead hoping on giving a 
helping hand in doubling the users on this list, thus creating a larger 
market for an OTP book. This will hopefully result in a proposal 
O'Reilly deems as interesting, for which there is not only a need for, 
but also a market. We will certainly be referencing these emails when we 
submit it. In the meantime, I encourage others to start writing even 
more books on the subject, including OTP. From what I know, there are 
quite a few in the pipeline, but not enough to motivate a whole section 
at Barnes & Noble or Waterstone's.

As mentioned previously if you have any feedback on what you might want 
to see in a basic Erlang book, we are very interested in hearing it.

Regards,
Francesco
--
http://www.erlang-consulting.com