
In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011) - tosh
https://www.nicklevine.org/lisp-book/talks/eclm-2011-10-23/plan.txt
======
rjurney
I know Mike. He was editor of my first book and I still deal with him. He’s
about the most standup guy I’ve ever worked with. If you’re thinking about
writing a book, pitch Mike. I can’t recommend him more. I needed help with
having the confidence to get my thoughts down on the first book and he coached
me through it.

Disclaimer: 4x O’Reilly author and contributor to their blog. Don’t think
there’s a financial incentive, I make less than minimum wage on books.

~~~
detaro
Why doesn't someone's experience attempting to write a technical book (even if
they failed for personal reasons) belong on Hacker News?

EDIT: above post originally said "This doesn't belong on Hacker News", but is
has been edited out.

~~~
rjurney
It’s the emails I object to.

~~~
detaro
Why? They don't paint anyone in a bad light IMHO?

~~~
rjurney
It’s rude.

~~~
badfrog
> It’s rude.

I don't think this two word explanation is going to help people understand
your opinion.

~~~
justin66
I know exactly what they mean.

------
xrd
I wrote a book for O'Reilly
([https://buildingtoolswithgithub.teddyhyde.io/](https://buildingtoolswithgithub.teddyhyde.io/))
and I only say that because what I'll say next is controversial.

First, there must be a huge market for technical books that don't appeal to
Lisp fanatics. There are people coming from nontraditional backgrounds into
technical roles, and they, I assert, probably want a different book than the
types of books O'Reilly generally publishes, which are very technical, like
those dealing with Lisp.

Two, and this is what is controversial: O'Reilly as a publisher is unable to
offer those types of books and misses out on those types of customers.

I don't know how they marketed my book, honestly. I intended that it would
speak to the beginner programmer by offering up chapters that introduced a new
programming language in each chapter. I hoped people who weren't technology
experts would find a gentle path into technology with my book. But I don't
think it resonated, maybe that speaks to the quality of the book, but maybe
not.

Less than 1% of the people in the world are software developers. Are the
people fascinated by Lisp less than 1% of that? But, excluding say the Luddite
population, let's say 90% of the rest of the people in the modern world do
want to learn about technology and how to play with it, and I'm not sure
O'Reilly knows how to reach them. O'Reilly is full of some of the smartest
people in the tech community, but I'm not sure the empathy for beginners is
there and that's hindering them as a publisher.

~~~
srean
> There are people coming from nontraditional backgrounds into technical
> roles, and they, I assert, probably want a different book than the types of
> books O'Reilly generally publishes.

... and "the for Dummies" does not cater to them ? Or are you saying that
O'Reilly should become somewhat more like the "Dummies" Series. Regardless of
the name some of those books dont speak to the reader as if the reader is a
dummy. Then there are those "21 days", "Unleashed".

I like it that O'Reilly speaks to me more than the "21 days" variety. Each to
his own. I have been happy with Apress (other than Practical Ocaml) and
Manning too. Packt is mostly an abomination.

~~~
xrd
I hate the dummies books too. People that consider themselves intelligent
don't want to buy a book that forces you to call yourself a dummy. I'm saying
there is another space for people that feel they are intelligent and don't yet
have the knowledge about programming and could do it given the right
introductions.

O'Reilly speaks to me too, but I think there is entire population of people
that aren't familiar with Tim O'Reilly and buy books from his publisher to
join that community of thinkers. And that's a shame.

~~~
eddieh
I think you're right about this. I'd much rather read LISP for Poets or LISP
for Future Presidents than something with a title that is insulting or
degrading. There's probably a considerable market for books that educate and
respect the reader.

~~~
xrd
That's a great theme. Programmers have a different set of aspirations than
most people, so making books that speak to both a different aspiration and
teach tech seems like a winner of an idea for the rest of the people out there
who don't identify as a nerd.

------
s_Hogg
Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad
language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

~~~
Annatar
Because it can easily solve or altogether eschew a lot of the issues that
object-oriented JavaScript developers are struggling with and that's barely
scraping the tip of the iceberg of problems which Lisp doesn't suffer from.

Alas one of the problems Lisp does quite acutely suffer from is that SBCL has
become a defacto standard and its support for anything that isn't GNU/Linux
(like Solaris / illumos) is dismal.

~~~
mepian
SBCL is open source, so you are free to improve the support for Solaris.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Also, the SBCL maintainers can be hired for custom help or support - one of my
customers did this, with good results.

~~~
Annatar
I'm a private person in this capacity, so paying someone to reverse the
breakage is out of the question. It's an outrage that something like that was
allowed to happen in the first place. If this were my software, not only would
I fix it immediately, but I would be deeply ashamed of myself for allowing it
to happen. We as programmers should start taking responsibility for our
actions.

------
tosh
Website of the book: [https://www.nicklevine.org/lisp-
book/](https://www.nicklevine.org/lisp-book/)

------
sparrigan
To second rjurney’s comment, I’ve also recently had the pleasure of working
with Mike Loukides, and his feedback has always been hugely insightful and
valuable.

------
jacques_chester
[2011].

~~~
adriftincode
Why do people tag the year on articles? I feel like hackers cling to the “if
it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm.

Update: Thanks for all the replies, makes sense. Why downvote an honest
question?

~~~
klez
I didn't downvote but I don't think you're being downvoted for asking an
honest question, but mostly because

> I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy”
> paradigm.

is incorrect and reeks of an accusation of elitism which is not fair in this
case.

~~~
adriftincode
I can see how it may have come off that way. It was my first thought as I’ve
seen people get pretty exited about the new—rather than the old. Some thoughts
are better kept to the self.

~~~
srean
> as I’ve seen people get pretty exited about the new—rather than the old

Hardly a trait exclusive to hackers.

