I'll donate when it all gets setup. I really like Pascal. Jeff Duntemann is writing new intro books and releasing then under a Creative Commons license iirc. It's a great language and a killer environment.
>Jeff Duntemann is writing new intro books and releasing then under a Creative Commons license iirc.
I remember his name as a computer book author from older PC days and mags/books, but have forgotten what he used to write about. Did he write about C or Pascal, say Turbo Pascal, earlier too? Just saw his site (http://www.duntemann.com/) and it seems to show only assembly language books (on a quick look). Not that it matters, of course he could write books on Pascal now, but just wondering whethere he wrote any Pascal books before.
>It's a great language and a killer environment.
Agreed. Was a Turbo Pascal user for some years, great language and lightning fast dev env. Done smaller amounts of Delphi work too, and loved it. Too bad about the corp. issues that have happened, and about no current low-cost edition. They discontinued Turbo Delphi Explorer, or rather the Turbo Explorer series (existed in around 2006) which included Turbo C++ Explorer too, IIRC. And the TD Explorer at the time was available in two versions, for Win 32 and .NET.
I posted a link to the Foundation's Web site to Jeff's Facebook page. (He's been busy getting his house in Colorado Springs ready to sell, as he and his wife are moving to Phoenix for health reasons. Facebook is about all he has time to check these days.) I'll also link this HN comment thread to him.
Jeff's blog is at http://www.contrapositivediary.com/ , and he updates that more frequently than his main Web site. (Which is to say, pretty infrequently at the moment, though I expect that to change once his big move is over.)
Yep, Duntemann is the author of Complete Turbo Pascal from the 80's.
It's a bit of a door-stopper, but it was one of the first programming books I ever read as a kid, and I have vague memories of it being a great introduction to software design in general.
Ha, I remember those big books. The Waite Group's "Microsoft C Bible" (by Nabajyoti Barkakati - my uncle brought it for me as a present on one of his visits), and many others ...
In those days many of those topics were new - being the early-ish days of the PC revolution - and Internet (and hence online docs) was less prevalent, so those books served a real need, despite the size. I remember reading the Turbo Pascal manual cover to cover, the DOS Tech Ref manual and many others too. Calling the DOS equivalent of Unix system calls (i.e. interrupt 21H calls) and so on, from TP, TC and sometimes assembly - using just DEBUG.EXE's A (Assemble) command. Good fun and learning ...
Jeff wrote about Pascal quite a bit in his columns, as well as some books. He wrote about anything he found interesting, but Pascal was his weapon of choice for most things so he covered it pretty well over the years.
"Yessir, the book you’re reading has been around the block a few times since I began writing it in November of 1983—which I boggle to think was over thirty years ago. It’s been through four print editions and on paper sold over 125,000 copies. It’s been translated into five languages."
that I heard from a McGraw-Hill editor, that Scott Meyers' book Effective C++ had sold in the region of 50,000 copies. And the editor, Simon Yates, said that was a fairly high number of sales for a computer book.
And now I read (above) that Duntemann's books sold 125,000 copies.
Phew.
I do remember reading that Turbo Pascal was hugely popular in those days, being the first under $100-dollar language compiler (it was $50, IIRC, others were probably closer to $500 at the time). My guess is that it was a combination of factors that led to such good sales of the book - Duntemann's own programming and writing expertise, for sure, but also the huge popularity of Turbo Pascal, and the fact that it was a boom time for desktop software apps and companies. Let's hope that his new books also become hits.
He'd probably appreciate it more if you made his science fiction books hits, as he's been trying to get back into SF writing recently, and has joined the indie publishing revolution (after getting talked into it by Sarah Hoyt).
Available on Kindle Unlimited: his novel The Cunning Blood [0], a newer novel, Ten Gentle Opportunities [1], and his collection Souls in Silicon: Tales of AI Confronting The Infinite. [2] More to come, too, stay tuned!
(Disclaimer: I've designated myself as Jeff's "#1 fanboy.")
Another tidbit from the introduction: "It’s tough to stay ahead in this business. Turbo Pascal 5.5 appeared in May of 1989, largely as a response to Microsoft’s totally unexpected (but now long-forgotten) QuickPascal. V5.5 brought with it the new dazzle of object-oriented programming, and while I did write the V5.5 OOP Guide
manual that Borland published with the V5.5 product I chose to pass on updating Complete Turbo Pascal for either V5.5 or V6.0."
Not to mention: "I mention all this history because I want people to understand where FreePascal from Square One
came from, emphasizing that it’s been a work in progress for thirty years. Why stop now? I don’t have to cater to publishers, paper costs, print runs, or release schedules anymore. The book can evolve with the compiler, and every so often you can download the latest update. My publishing company Copperwood Press offers a print-on-demand paper edition if you’d like one, but you can print it yourself if you prefer. That’s how technical publishing ought to be, and someday will be."
Bravo! If this was how copyright worked - that someone could make a (presumably) decent living for a few years, and the give it all away - would not have as much issues with the intellectual property lobby and Micky Mouse extensions.
Either way, I think it is fantastic to see someone liberating a project of 30 years like this!
I was paid for that book four separate times, and made plenty of money on it. I want FreePascal and Lazarus to be better known than they are; hell, I want Pascal to just keep its place in that Great Big Bag o' Programming Languages.
One clarification: I have not yet posted a POD edition of the book, though once it gets a little more toward finished I'm sure I will. You can always print it locally if you want hardcopy.
Actually, in some respects it was that book that made my reputation, not vise versa. I wrote it when I was just getting into second gear writing technical articles in the magazines. I was introduced to a book acquisitions editor at Scott, Foresman by my editor at PC Tech Journal in 1983, and he took my proposal on her recommendation.
Turbo Pascal's low price compared to most other compilers made it an impulse buy. $50? Why not? And word-of-mouth did a lot of the rest.
