

A book review written in JavaScript - bpierre
http://www.robinsloan.com/summer-reading/and-programming/

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robinsloan
Author here: Cool to see this here, bpierre. Thank you. I really hope some HN
readers decide to give this book a look; it's really shockingly good, all the
more so for having been written in 1997. I'm a decidedly amateur programmer,
but even I found myself nodding my head, thinking: "Yes, that's it. That's
it!"

~~~
breadbox
I discovered Ellen Fullman by chance back in the 90s. Unfortunately she hasn't
writing any nonfiction since that I know of -- her last two books are both
novels. "The Bug" is a fun read, particularly if you've ever had to do any
low-level GUI programming back in the pre-browser days, but it's a little thin
overall. Haven't read her newest one yet.

If she started writing nonfiction again, I'd buy it sight unseen.

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nene
Neat, but it's still a very linear narrative, with the addition of having to
type in commands to be able to read the next section.

Would have been much better if the review was exposed as an API which you
could explore freely. And maybe some embedded silly programming challenges to
be able to more effectively read the review. e.g. the example paragraph API
could have just .nextChar() and .hasMoreChars() methods, so one would have to
write a loop to comfortably read the example.

Opportunities are endless, though the book itself looks interesting.

------
RyanMcGreal
"The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-it notes everywhere; the
whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the
messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles
up around the programmer."

That's a beautiful description.

------
cleverjake
This was fun. Definitely more engaged with it than the average review, though
I think that the novelty would wear off quickly after this first one.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Of course, but this is a one-time thing. Do it once, it's a fun novelty. But
you'd never really do it again.

------
kmfrk
I'm getting this error:

    
    
        ReferenceError: Can't find variable: woopraTracker
    

When I basically do anything after

    
    
        s = new SummerReading()

~~~
CodeMage
If you use Ghostery, pause blocking or whitelist Woopra.

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mikeleeorg
Neat, hitting the up-arrow did what I expected it to do.

------
badhairday
The interactive review was fun and caught my attention. The book has been
purchased.

------
arocks
A fun review. But if he had gone all the way and made the instructions come in
Javascript + HTML5 then it would have actually waited for us to finish typing.
Not to mention the non-linear narration possibilities.

