Writing a Book

[Tech07]

Bashing a book is, duh, easy. Who here wants to (can) write a book? Turf
wars? There is no war, there is only <something akin to politics and/or
government> . "Son, you want to write a book? There are no books anymore. It
happened away way before they "trademarked" "freedom". Son, your life is in
constant peril. Because you seek to be free.

 

[BGB / cr88192]

Richard Heathfield, spinoza111 and myself have all written books on
programming topics. Also a few other less regular regs.

maybe even I could write one?...

but then again, on what topic?
it seems like on almost any topic there are plenty of books written.


hmm:
physics simulators (but, then again, I am soon to realize that my physics
sucks vs people who actually know much of anything about the topic...).

compilers: maybe, but it seems lots of people have already written books on
this.

....

probably, finding a good topic to write a (non-fiction) book on is a good
deal harder than that of finding a good project direction (as it seems at
times like there is nothing to do which is not being done already...).

or such...

 

[Seebs]

maybe even I could write one?...

You never know 'til you try.

In my case, the eventual result was:

Yes, I can write a book. It takes longer than I expected, it's a lot
harder than I expected, and I learned a lot more from it than most of my
readers probably will. But it was a ton of fun.

If I had the time, would do again.

-s

 

[BGB / cr88192]

Writing a book is not the hard part. Getting a publisher to pay /you/
(rather than vice versa) is the hard part.

hadn't thought of publisher...

would have assumed just making it available online, but I guess this is more
of a paper...

Ecclesiastes 12:12

<snip>

yes, ok.


I guess in a way, books are more the organized form of the otherwise
disorganized information trudging...

one of the ideas I had in the past had been a 'vectorized' physics book
(AKA: physics reworked to largely replace all this dirty old trigonometry
with vectors), but then I have disovered, apparently newer college-level
physics books have already done this...

the only real next step along this road would then be to explain how to do
real-time computer simulations of most of this stuff, but this would be
about like an annotated physics engine in book form.

the question then is that of it having a point...


it is unclear if there is much other topic at present, since most other
topics which come to mind either already have books, or don't need them.

VMs are another possibility, but this topic is very fluid and would be
difficult to give adequate coverage.


and, I can't probably say much, having essentially created something almost
a sort of monstrosity (need a bytecode? how about interpreted x86?...). it
works, but would seem at the outset to be a distasteful design, almost an
ad-hoc chimera of different technologies. it is not clear that this would be
a good direction to present (as opposed to the more clean/sterile designs
pursued by many other VMs...).

many people would probably stop just as soon as x86 were proposed as a
bytecode (or, even likely an x86 derived bytecode).

(horrid as it is though, I am left thinking x86 may actually be a worthwhile
model for a low-level bytecode...).

there are a few possible tweaks, but as noted, this proposition is sort of a
"house of cards" (it may be tempting to "clean house" in a few "innocent"
ways, but in so doing destroy any real merit of following this path, as one
may find something "x86-like but not binary compatible" to be an almost
worthless prospect...).

 

[Tech07]

Richard Heathfield, spinoza111 and myself have all written books on
programming topics. Also a few other less regular regs.

1. I respond to posts sequentially (ok, most of the time, but maybe I'm
tantric).
2. I respect that. I love books I have learned a lot from them.
3. Let's not go there.
4. Let's not go there either, but thanks.

 

[Tech07]

Writing a book is not the hard part. Getting a publisher to pay /you/
(rather than vice versa) is the hard part.

I wouldn't do it that way. I can write code, oops, that's all you can do?
(being facetious). No, if I write a book, I'll write the fucking thing. And
then make it. (Did I use the F word again? I'm such a fucking idiot,
seesh).

Ecclesiastes 12:12

"first one over the hill gets arrows in his back"?


P.S. Don't be waitin' for me writin' any books.

 

[Frank]

In Dread Ink, the Grave Hand of Richard Heathfield Did Inscribe:

Ecclesiastes 12:12

aND FURTHER, by these my son, be admonished, because Isaiah is next, and
it's the raving of self-important clerics.

--
Frank

....it's obviously how his disease manifests itself, any kind of substance
dependency is very deep, issues of self esteem, you can just tell that he's
a really insecure and vulnerable person -- and I love him. You know,
sometimes I listen to him on the radio, and he's very judgmental, he's a
very angry person, and I just want to remind him that anytime you have a
finger pointing at someone else, there's three pointing back at you.
~~ Al Franken

 

[Frank]

In Dread Ink, the Grave Hand of Richard Heathfield Did Inscribe:

Rightly or wrongly, I conclude from the above response that you're
more interested in making a fool of yourself than in participating in
sensible discussions.

I'm a day's journey from Revision Centrale. I would think that you would
want to know that Amis are building a $2 billion facility on the river
jordan.

Sometimes I diss you just because you're english. I'm already a recovering
racist and sexist. I think you see abstract computer science as a work in
progress.
--
Frank

The irony upon irony of this lawsuit was great. First, Fox having the
trademark 'fair and balanced' -- a network which is anything but fair and
balanced. Then there's the irony of a news organization trying to suppress
free speech.
~~ Al Franken, CNN interview