http://www.davidflanagan.com/ books, tools and techniques for programmers (plus some anti-war activism) en-us 2008-04-17T10:24:08-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_04.html#000161 The Ruby Programming Language has been gratifyingly well received by readers and reviewers. In addition to glowing reviews at rubyinside.com and slashdot.org, it has been reviewed ten times at amazon.com and I proud to say that all ten reviews... ruby David 2008-04-17T10:24:08-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_04.html#000160 I've put together a list of 81 errors and updates to my Ruby book. These are fixed in the next printing. If you already own a copy of the book, however, you can go through and enter the changes... ruby David 2008-04-14T21:18:10-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_04.html#000159 The Ruby Programming Language is going to be reprinted next week, and O'Reilly has given me SVN write access to the docbook files to fix typos, errors, etc. I've got a list of about 25 relatively minor erros that... ruby David 2008-04-07T15:04:26-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_03.html#000158 I just read that closures are being added to C++ [PDF link]. A note to Sun: you know your language is falling embarrassingly behind if the C++ standards committee can move more nimbly than you can! (For those who... java David 2008-03-31T22:34:14-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_03.html#000157 Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of Bush's war with Iraq. The costs: 3990 US soldiers dead That is more than 2 per day. 20,416 US soldiers wounded (badly enough to require air transport). That's more than 11 per day.... anti-war David 2008-03-18T12:02:53-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_03.html#000156 If you arrived here after reading slashdot's review of The Ruby Programming Language, you've come to the right place. Thanks, Brian, for the kind words! The post below includes links to the book's table of contents and to an... ruby David 2008-03-03T11:34:34-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_02.html#000154 The Ruby Programming Language is finally in stock and shipping from online booksellers! Press Release: actually quite a good overview of the book, who it is for and the niche it hopes to fill. Preview: an interactive table-of-contents, with... ruby David 2008-02-07T11:39:24-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_01.html#000153 I've just discovered that the O'Reilly website now displays a browsable table of contents that allows you to preview the start of each chapter and each section of my book. In other book news, Amazon is still listing the... ruby David 2008-01-24T13:47:35-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_01.html#000152 All the example code from my Ruby book is now available for download. As I've mentioned before, you can also browse the book's table of contents.... ruby David 2008-01-23T15:16:10-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_01.html#000151 Amazon continues to say that my Ruby book will be in stock tomorrow. So today is the last day that you can pre-order the book and save an additional 5% on it. As I type this, they're listing it... ruby David 2008-01-23T07:10:16-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_01.html#000150 The Ruby Programming Language was sent to the printer on Friday the 11th, and should be printed and bound on Monday January 21st. This is on schedule. Amazon still says that they expect to start fulfilling orders on January... ruby David 2008-01-15T15:46:25-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2008_01.html#000149 This post, and its title, is a response to Giles Bowkett's clairvoyant review of my Ruby book. In that review, he says: I am "soulless", my publisher was "really cool once", and that you "sure as hell don't want... ruby David 2008-01-15T13:06:50-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2007_11.html#000148 In the post below I hinted at a secret contributor, besides Matz and myself, to the Ruby book. Amazon now displays the latest cover design for the book, and all can now be revealed.... To find out who's contribution... ruby David 2007-11-26T22:16:43-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2007_11.html#000147 I've submitted my Ruby book to the production department at O'Reilly.They're going to allow me to make last minute changes as the final details (mainly IO encoding issues) are implemented in Ruby 1.9, but it really is going to... ruby David 2007-11-13T16:39:40-08:00 http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/2007_11.html#000146 My upcoming book, The Ruby Programming Language, now has cover art!. Here it is (hotlinked from amazon): The birds on the cover are Horned Sungem hummingbirds. (Ruby-throated hummingbirds would have been nice, too, but these are beautiful birds and have... ruby David 2007-11-08T10:42:44-08:00