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Any published authors on here?
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-05-31, 15:11

Thanks, I hope so. (got a link to the dissertation online? I wouldn't mind taking a peek at it, if that's alright with you.)

Another weekend of ass-in-chair, another drop to the publisher.

Rejected subtitles so far:

"It done, bitches!"

"There, I fixed it for you." <--- I actually like this one ^_^

"No this isn't a chemistry book."
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2011-05-31, 16:09

So my subtitle is still in the running?

Seriously man, the wet panties bit will sell *millions*
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-05-31, 16:32

I'm thinking so! The publisher says there aren't enough women in CS to go that route, but I say "hey! what better way to pull them in!" Figure we can get an NSF Women in Science grant that way, amirite??
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2011-05-31, 16:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
NSF Women
I can't quite decide if that NSF is for "National Science Foundation" or "Not Safe For"....

...especially in the context of 709's subtitle.
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Dave
Ninja Editor
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
 
2011-06-01, 01:04

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad View Post
I can't quite decide if that NSF is for "National Science Foundation" or "Not Safe For"....

...especially in the context of 709's subtitle.
Oooh! Oooh! It could be one of those doubly things!!!
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-06-03, 16:49

Holy shibnitz, I think they're *serious* about this whole 'book' thing...

http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Desi...7136571&sr=8-1



*oontzoontzoontzoontz*
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Capella
Dark Cat of the Sith
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Rochester, NY
Send a message via AIM to Capella  
2011-06-03, 16:58

Good for you!
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2011-06-03, 17:28

You, sir, have a badass name.

And thank god someone is making an earnest effort to replace GoF because I did not enjoy that textbook one bit.
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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2011-06-03, 18:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraetos View Post
You, sir, have a badass name.

And thank god someone is making an earnest effort to replace GoF because I did not enjoy that textbook one bit.
But Goblet of Fire was the turning point of the whole series!

OH.

Congrats, Kick! And yes, you do have a cool name. It's no Benedict Cumberbatch, but it's pretty cool.

Do you really go by "McC."? I've never seen anyone do that before, except I guess McG, the director. But I don't actually know a lot of McPeople.

*way too interested in people's names*

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-06-03, 18:13

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraetos View Post
You, sir, have a badass name.
... BWAHAHAHAHAHA, er, thank you? That may be the first time I've ever been told *that*...

Quote:
And thank god someone is making an earnest effort to replace GoF because I did not enjoy that textbook one bit.
Oh no, sorry, this doesn't replace GoF, but it does give a better *introduction* to design patterns. If this is the freshman text, GoF is the junior level class.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robo View Post
But Goblet of Fire was the turning point of the whole series!

OH.

Congrats, Kick! And yes, you do have a cool name. It's no Benedict Cumberbatch, but it's pretty cool.
That guy has the best name *EVER*. If I saw it in a book, I'd scoff at it being too perfect to be real.

Quote:
Do you really go by "McC."? I've never seen anyone do that before, except I guess McG, the director. But I don't actually know a lot of McPeople.

*way too interested in people's names*
Yup. The proper abbreviation of McXxxxxx is McX. If you abbreviated them just M., most of Scotland would be in one letter in the database. So the Mc is sort of ignored for abbreviation purposes. My middle name is McColm, and I am utterly unfindable as 'Jason Smith' online (even got quoted in a WSJ article on it!), so I use "Jason McC. Smith" for publications. It's google-unique.
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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2011-06-03, 18:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha
Yup. The proper abbreviation of McXxxxxx is McX. If you abbreviated them just M., most of Scotland would be in one letter in the database. So the Mc is sort of ignored for abbreviation purposes. My middle name is McColm, and I am utterly unfindable as 'Jason Smith' online (even got quoted in a WSJ article on it!), so I use "Jason McC. Smith" for publications. It's google-unique.
I knew that, I guess I just don't know anybody who actually goes by "McX.," since it's always their last name. But if it's your middle name, initializing it makes sense.

It means your name has thirteen letters, though.
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2011-06-03, 18:21

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
Oh no, sorry, this doesn't replace GoF, but it does give a better *introduction* to design patterns. If this is the freshman text, GoF is the junior level class.
Well GoF is how I was introduced to design patterns so... yeah.

Yeah I guess it would be difficult to outright replace GoF because it's pretty much the standard, but it is not an easy read.

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-06-03, 19:31

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robo View Post
I knew that, I guess I just don't know anybody who actually goes by "McX.," since it's always their last name. But if it's your middle name, initializing it makes sense.

It means your name has thirteen letters, though.
Rawk. The Number of the Geek.
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-06-03, 19:32

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraetos View Post
Well GoF is how I was introduced to design patterns so... yeah.

Yeah I guess it would be difficult to outright replace GoF because it's pretty much the standard, but it is not an easy read.
No, it's really not, and why I undertook this. GoF is *GREAT* and an amazing revelation *IF* you're already a seasoned programmer who has run across the problems they state.

If you *haven't*, like, say, when you're just starting out, then you're left wondering why the hell you should care.

This work grew out of a project to teach a computer to automatically detect design patterns in source code. I had to break down 'software design' into a formalized, repeatable process, and find the core basic features to look for first, then the software could build them up into the more established GoF level patterns.

And then it occurred to me, that if I could teach a computer to do it, I might be able to teach students how to do the same: Here's your basic taxonomy of concepts, here's how they interact, and here's how they can be used as building blocks. ie, teach students how to *think* about design from the ground up.

And I do mean the ground up. One of the EDPs is Recursion, for god's sake. Another is Create Object... which is a 12 page discussion on why, and how, etc. It's pretty damned fundamental.
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2011-06-03, 20:02

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
And I do mean the ground up. One of the EDPs is Recursion, for god's sake. Another is Create Object... which is a 12 page discussion on why, and how, etc. It's pretty damned fundamental.
That's awesome, though. It took me a while to really grok recursion. I mean, I "got" the concept when it was explained to me in data structures, but it wasn't until a few classes later that I was staring at the output of a recursive function I was trying to debug when I realized "oh! THIS is why recursion is useful!"

So, yeah. I'm interested. And just last week I thought I would never want to see another CS textbook again

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
  quote
Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-06-03, 21:31

LOL I'm so sorry...

The real spiffy part (I think) is that there's an entire 'periodic table' based off of actual OO theory, such that you can describe any method call, or method call chain, (that's all this first book describes, is method calls) in a system in terms of what the relationship is between the end points. This lets someone talk about the system not in regards to the implementation details, but as a series of concepts, independent of the actual implementation structure.

And, since each method call sits within this 'periodic table', and has neighbors, any refactoring can tell you precisely what's going to happen by where your endpoint relationship will end up in the design space. And then you can propagate that up the design hierarchy and watch even very large design patterns change and shift, if the relationships are altered. If the implementation changes, but *doesn't* alter the relationship between the endpoints, then the concepts don't change, and the design remains stable.

By putting it on a formal footing, you get an amazing amount of power, but by writing them up as human-oriented design patterns, you get comprehensibility. By making them *small* concepts, you can introduce the ideas to a beginner, and get them thinking about software at higher levels of abstraction from day 1.

So you learn the concepts, and you learn how they relate to each other, and you get roadmaps for where you're likely to end up next.
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Ryan
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Promise Land of Trustafarians
 
2011-07-31, 18:09

Is there a release date for this? I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy once it's out.
  quote
Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2011-09-11, 18:33

Apparently the publisher got nervous about my progress and bumped it out to Mar 2012, but it is available for pre-order.

And I just sent in the entire ball of wax. The only thing not done at this point is the index, and they said they'd handle that.

444 pages, 167 figures, and 18 months later... holy shit, I wrote a book.

Excuse me, I'm going to go get very drunk now.
  quote
Dave
Ninja Editor
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
 
2011-09-11, 19:05

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
Apparently the publisher got nervous about my progress and bumped it out to Mar 2012, but it is available for pre-order.

And I just sent in the entire ball of wax. The only thing not done at this point is the index, and they said they'd handle that.

444 pages, 167 figures, and 18 months later... holy shit, I wrote a book.

Excuse me, I'm going to go get very drunk now.
Grats!
  quote
Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2011-09-11, 20:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
holy shit, I wrote a book.

Excuse me, I'm going to go get very drunk now.
The only proper response.

If you want to really freak yourself out, count the words.

And congratulations! As a published author, you're a member of a pretty exclusive club. (*grits teeth with envy*)

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
  quote
Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-01-21, 19:04

Hey all - copyediting is in full swing now, and then off to production and galleys it goes. Whee!

Setting up a basic super simple website for the book and materials, hosted at DreamHost, one-click WordPress, blah blah blah... anyone have a good theme to recommend?
  quote
Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2012-03-20, 20:59

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
Holy shibnitz, I think they're *serious* about this whole 'book' thing...

http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Desi...7136571&sr=8-1


This whole 'book' thing is very exciting. I wish to offer the most intense congratulations on your completion of this remarkable work. The relief must be positively massive.

I thought the "book description" at this link was very clearly written and quite understandable, even for those who don't have even a shred of a clue. I doubt that I'll be buying a copy, however. Maybe I could visit one at a bookstore one of these days though.

In the meantime, any chance you could quote a few lines from Grady's foreward? (Or, even better, quote the *whole* foreward?) I'm positively *dying* to read what he says, especially since I remember waaay back to when you first met him at that conference. (Was it in Philly?) And you went up and introduced yourself to him after he finished speaking. And you told me that he was a god-like being. heh

And I can't help thinking back to those days when you were sleeping on a cot in your graduate-student office in NC and procrastinating wrt working on your dissertation by hanging out at AI at 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. I guess that must have been in the fall of 2003, wasn't it? Before the birth of AN.

Well, anyway, as I said, this is all very exciting.

Last edited by Windswept : 2012-03-22 at 18:20.
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-03-27, 18:05

Quote:
Originally Posted by Windswept View Post
This whole 'book' thing is very exciting. I wish to offer the most intense congratulations on your completion of this remarkable work. The relief must be positively massive.

I thought the "book description" at this link was very clearly written and quite understandable, even for those who don't have even a shred of a clue. I doubt that I'll be buying a copy, however. Maybe I could visit one at a bookstore one of these days though.
Yes! Shipping April 9th!

But... available through Kindle now, I just found out!

http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Desi...2879029&sr=8-2

Quote:
In the meantime, any chance you could quote a few lines from Grady's foreward? (Or, even better, quote the *whole* foreward?) I'm positively *dying* to read what he says, especially since I remember waaay back to when you first met him at that conference. (Was it in Philly?) And you went up and introduced yourself to him after he finished speaking. And you told me that he was a god-like being. heh
LOL OMG, that was... 2005, in Pittsburgh. I introduced myself to him, and to the other keynote speaker. I worked with Grady at IBM, and the other keynote speaker? Now my boss.

Grady was kind enough to write the Foreword, just a bit ago, JUST in time for publication:

Quote:
There’s a wonderful scene in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey that comes to mind.

Having spent several months alone on the derelict ship Discovery—and that after having earlier lobotomized the errant Hal—Dr. David Bowman approaches a monolith that draws him in to a new world. His final message back to earth ends “It’s full of stars!”

Software-intensive systems are new worlds that we create with our own mental labor. Whereas the world that Bowman saw was formed from atoms and thus full of stars, our worlds are formed from bits...and are full of patterns.

Whether intentional or not, all well-structured software intensive systems are full of patterns. Identifying the patterns in a system serves to raise the level of abstraction in reasoning about that system; imposing patterns on a system serves to bring even further order, elegance, and simplicity to that system. In my experience, patterns are one of the most important developments in software engineering in the past two decades.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jason as he evolved his work on SPQR, and let me assure you that he has contributed greatly to the advance of the understanding and practice of patterns. Elemental Design Patterns will help you think about patterns in a new way, a way that will help you apply patterns to improve the software worlds that you create and evolve. If you are new to patterns, this is a great book to start your journey; if you are an old hand with patterns, then I expect you’ll learn some new things. I certainly did.

Grady Booch
IBM Fellow
February 2012
Spiffy. ^_^

Quote:
And I can't help thinking back to those days when you were sleeping on a cot in your graduate-student office in NC and procrastinating wrt working on your dissertation by hanging out at AI at 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. I guess that must have been in the fall of 2003, wasn't it? Before the birth of AN.
Oh lord, yeah, I spent way too much time on AI. LOL

Quote:
Well, anyway, as I said, this is all very exciting.
Thank you so much, I'm really rather over the moon today. Recorded some short video podcasts recently for the publisher, and now we're discussing online lectures...

Last edited by Kickaha : 2012-03-27 at 18:25.
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Wyatt
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
 
2012-06-04, 15:01

Everybody check this out: Our boy Kickaha just got a review over at Slashdot that's practically glowing. Way to go!

http://books.slashdot.org/story/12/0...esign-patterns
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-06-04, 19:37

Thanks man! Saw it this afternoon, and my eyes about bugged out. LOL

*bounce bounce*

I HIT SLASHDOT!

(again)

HEE
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Bryson
Rocket Surgeon
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
 
2012-06-04, 19:50

OK, if I don't even understand the review I guess I have no hope with the book.

Good for you, sir!

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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-06-04, 20:24

Meh, I thought the reviewer actually sold it more as a theoretical system (which, okay, it *is*) than a collection of introductory design patterns. Given that he's an established practitioner, that makes sense, that's his focus, but I wrote the book to also target new programmers, as an introduction to the literature and a new way of thinking about programming in general.

So, like, don't get scared off by his review. I swear to god it's not that complex.
  quote
Wyatt
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
 
2012-06-04, 21:35

The review really made me want to read it. I'm not really a beginner, but I'm about 90% self-taught, so I don't have much formal background. I immediately added the Kindle version to my Amazon wish list. It sounds great.
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Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-06-04, 21:55

Cool, thanks! Do let me know what you think about it, I'm already forming the edit list for 2nd ed.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2012-06-04, 23:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bryson View Post
OK, if I don't even understand the review I guess I have no hope with the book.


Same.
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