Since We're Sharing Books We've Written

[Smith1776]

It looks like we have a lot of people on the forum who are authors. I'd like to share a book I wrote a couple years ago.

The Paradigm is a book that I wrote in response to what I saw as a pretty poor market of self-improvement/self-actualization books. My biggest gripe was that most of the books I saw were piecemeal rather than holistic. There wasn't a book that took all the major facets of life and tried to combine the best research into a single volume. So I decided to write such a book. I did my best to find the leading research on diet, exercise, finance, personal planning, etc. and combine it into a single offering.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradigm-Unified ... 154417263X

[vnatale]

It looks like we have a lot of people on the forum who are authors. I'd like to share a book I wrote a couple years ago.

The Paradigm is a book that I wrote in response to what I saw as a pretty poor market of self-improvement/self-actualization books. My biggest gripe was that most of the books I saw were piecemeal rather than holistic. There wasn't a book that took all the major facets of life and tried to combine the best research into a single volume. So I decided to write such a book. I did my best to find the leading research on diet, exercise, finance, personal planning, etc. and combine it into a single offering.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradigm-Unified ... 154417263X

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

[Smith1776]

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

Wowza! Thank you, Vinny! You did not need to do that, but I really appreciate it!

I can't imagine a better crowd to share my work with than this forum.

[vnatale]

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

Wowza! Thank you, Vinny! You did not need to do that, but I really appreciate it!

I can't imagine a better crowd to share my work with than this forum.

I would not have bought it if I did not think it was of interest so no thanks needed! It's just a bonus that I somewhat know the book's author.

Vinny

[Libertarian666]

Large Problems, Small Machines. San Diego, Academic Press, 1992.
Efficient C/C++ Programming: Smaller, Faster, Better, 2nd Edition. Boston: AP Professional, 1994.
Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.
Who’s Afraid of Java? Boston: AP Professional, 1997.
Who's Afraid of More C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1998.
Optimizing C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Learning to Program in C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
C++: A Dialog. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.
Retirement Life Insurance: How Much is Needed to Optimize Retirement Spending 1st Edition: DeGruyter Press, 2017.

Note: Several of these books have been translated into other languages, and there are several more titles with basically the same text as some of these but with some multimedia content added.

[Libertarian666]

It looks like we have a lot of people on the forum who are authors. I'd like to share a book I wrote a couple years ago.

The Paradigm is a book that I wrote in response to what I saw as a pretty poor market of self-improvement/self-actualization books. My biggest gripe was that most of the books I saw were piecemeal rather than holistic. There wasn't a book that took all the major facets of life and tried to combine the best research into a single volume. So I decided to write such a book. I did my best to find the leading research on diet, exercise, finance, personal planning, etc. and combine it into a single offering.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradigm-Unified ... 154417263X

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

Thanks! Which one, if I may ask?

[vnatale]

It looks like we have a lot of people on the forum who are authors. I'd like to share a book I wrote a couple years ago.

The Paradigm is a book that I wrote in response to what I saw as a pretty poor market of self-improvement/self-actualization books. My biggest gripe was that most of the books I saw were piecemeal rather than holistic. There wasn't a book that took all the major facets of life and tried to combine the best research into a single volume. So I decided to write such a book. I did my best to find the leading research on diet, exercise, finance, personal planning, etc. and combine it into a single offering.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradigm-Unified ... 154417263X

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

Thanks! Which one, if I may ask?

Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.

I bought it used from Amazon and it no longer had the CD.

Is C++ still used? And, if so, is the book still relevant?

Vinny

[pp4me]

Large Problems, Small Machines. San Diego, Academic Press, 1992.
Efficient C/C++ Programming: Smaller, Faster, Better, 2nd Edition. Boston: AP Professional, 1994.
Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.
Who’s Afraid of Java? Boston: AP Professional, 1997.
Who's Afraid of More C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1998.
Optimizing C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Learning to Program in C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
C++: A Dialog. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.
Retirement Life Insurance: How Much is Needed to Optimize Retirement Spending 1st Edition: DeGruyter Press, 2017.

Note: Several of these books have been translated into other languages, and there are several more titles with basically the same text as some of these but with some multimedia content added.

Impressive list of books Tech. Our software development paths seem to have a lot in common but I never wrote a book and never read any of yours. I think the only book I ever read on the subject of C++ was the "For Dummies" book because I was having a hard time demystifying object-oriented programming when, in fact, I probably invented it (not really, but I was always going in that direction since I started programming in C).

If you don't mind me asking, and you can answer in general terms - how lucrative was it to write these books?

[Libertarian666]

It looks like we have a lot of people on the forum who are authors. I'd like to share a book I wrote a couple years ago.

The Paradigm is a book that I wrote in response to what I saw as a pretty poor market of self-improvement/self-actualization books. My biggest gripe was that most of the books I saw were piecemeal rather than holistic. There wasn't a book that took all the major facets of life and tried to combine the best research into a single volume. So I decided to write such a book. I did my best to find the leading research on diet, exercise, finance, personal planning, etc. and combine it into a single offering.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradigm-Unified ... 154417263X

Why not! Just bought Kindle version. Was just about to starting to reading again the Bolton book. But now yours will be competing for reading attention!

By the way, I did buy and read the new Permanent Portfolio book last Saturday. And, about a month ago I bought the Steve Heller book in which he wrote with his future wife.

Vinny

Thanks! Which one, if I may ask?

Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.

I bought it used from Amazon and it no longer had the CD.

Is C++ still used? And, if so, is the book still relevant?

Vinny

C++ is definitely still used. The book is out of date because the language has evolved quite a bit since then, but most of the programs should still work with a modern compiler like the free version of Visual Studio that is available from Microsoft: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/than ... ity&rel=16.

[Libertarian666]

Large Problems, Small Machines. San Diego, Academic Press, 1992.
Efficient C/C++ Programming: Smaller, Faster, Better, 2nd Edition. Boston: AP Professional, 1994.
Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.
Who’s Afraid of Java? Boston: AP Professional, 1997.
Who's Afraid of More C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1998.
Optimizing C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Learning to Program in C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
C++: A Dialog. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.
Retirement Life Insurance: How Much is Needed to Optimize Retirement Spending 1st Edition: DeGruyter Press, 2017.

Note: Several of these books have been translated into other languages, and there are several more titles with basically the same text as some of these but with some multimedia content added.

Impressive list of books Tech. Our software development paths seem to have a lot in common but I never wrote a book and never read any of yours. I think the only book I ever read on the subject of C++ was the "For Dummies" book because I was having a hard time demystifying object-oriented programming when, in fact, I probably invented it (not really, but I was always going in that direction since I started programming in C).

If you don't mind me asking, and you can answer in general terms - how lucrative was it to write these books?

At a very rough guess, I probably made about $10/hour for my writing.
Writing books may have helped me get some jobs that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten; if so, that would vastly outweigh the direct payments from publishers.

[pp4me]

Large Problems, Small Machines. San Diego, Academic Press, 1992.
Efficient C/C++ Programming: Smaller, Faster, Better, 2nd Edition. Boston: AP Professional, 1994.
Who's Afraid of C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1996.
Who’s Afraid of Java? Boston: AP Professional, 1997.
Who's Afraid of More C++? Boston: AP Professional, 1998.
Optimizing C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Learning to Program in C++. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
C++: A Dialog. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.
Retirement Life Insurance: How Much is Needed to Optimize Retirement Spending 1st Edition: DeGruyter Press, 2017.

Note: Several of these books have been translated into other languages, and there are several more titles with basically the same text as some of these but with some multimedia content added.

Impressive list of books Tech. Our software development paths seem to have a lot in common but I never wrote a book and never read any of yours. I think the only book I ever read on the subject of C++ was the "For Dummies" book because I was having a hard time demystifying object-oriented programming when, in fact, I probably invented it (not really, but I was always going in that direction since I started programming in C).

If you don't mind me asking, and you can answer in general terms - how lucrative was it to write these books?

At a very rough guess, I probably made about $10/hour for my writing.
Writing books may have helped me get some jobs that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten; if so, that would vastly outweigh the direct payments from publishers.

Thanks for that info.

[Tortoise]

Is C++ still used?

It’s the primary language I use in my current job.

In embedded applications (e.g., firmware and software that runs on smartphone modems and other low-power chips) and in video games, the hardware resources are relatively limited and you need to milk every last drop of performance out of them. In those cases, the small language size, fine-grained control, and memory management that C and C++ provide often make them the best tools for the job.

[pp4me]

Is C++ still used?

It’s the primary language I use in my current job.

In embedded applications (e.g., firmware and software that runs on smartphone modems and other low-power chips) and in video games, the hardware resources are relatively limited and you need to milk every last drop of performance out of them. In those cases, the small language size, fine-grained control, and memory management that C and C++ provide often make them the best tools for the job.

With C and C++ you still have to think about what you are doing with every line of code you write. Having learned programming with board wiring and then assembly language programming this becomes a deeply ingrained habit. IMHO this is a good thing.

[Libertarian666]

Is C++ still used?

It’s the primary language I use in my current job.

In embedded applications (e.g., firmware and software that runs on smartphone modems and other low-power chips) and in video games, the hardware resources are relatively limited and you need to milk every last drop of performance out of them. In those cases, the small language size, fine-grained control, and memory management that C and C++ provide often make them the best tools for the job.

Yes, and in what I'm doing, although it is at the other end of the scale in terms of the amount of hardware resources, efficiency is still tremendously important. No one wants to spend a ton of money on persistent memory devices if they can't get the astounding performance that those devices are capable of. However, getting that performance requires great attention to detail and really can't be done in any other language I'm aware of.

[Tortoise]

Yes, and in what I'm doing, although it is at the other end of the scale in terms of the amount of hardware resources, efficiency is still tremendously important. No one wants to spend a ton of money on persistent memory devices if they can't get the astounding performance that those devices are capable of. However, getting that performance requires great attention to detail and really can't be done in any other language I'm aware of.

Well, there's always assembly language.

At my previous company, I actually had to do about half of my programming in assembly language for a vector processor. (C/C++ compilers have gotten quite good, but they're still not as efficient as hand-coded assembly in many cases.) It was interesting, to be sure, and a form of education in itself, but wow -- I don't think I ever want to do that again! C and C++ are about as low-level as I want to go now.

[Libertarian666]

Yes, and in what I'm doing, although it is at the other end of the scale in terms of the amount of hardware resources, efficiency is still tremendously important. No one wants to spend a ton of money on persistent memory devices if they can't get the astounding performance that those devices are capable of. However, getting that performance requires great attention to detail and really can't be done in any other language I'm aware of.

Well, there's always assembly language.

At my previous company, I actually had to do about half of my programming in assembly language for a vector processor. (C/C++ compilers have gotten quite good, but they're still not as efficient as hand-coded assembly in many cases.) It was interesting, to be sure, and a form of education in itself, but wow -- I don't think I ever want to do that again! C and C++ are about as low-level as I want to go now.

I've used more assembly/machine languages than I can recall, starting with the Z80, where I had to hand-assemble the code because there wasn't an assembler on the TRS-80.

I've been writing in C++ exclusively for the last 25 years. I used to have to drop into assembly on occasion but it has been at least a decade since that was necessary.
These days the Visual Studio C++ compiler is very good at generating good code... most of the time.
Once in awhile it does absurd things that "work" but generate terrible code that takes 10x the necessary instructions or worse.
Whenever I see performance degradation, first I look for my own mistake. If I can't see anything that I've done stupidly, then I will look at the disassembly listing, and sometimes I see terrible code.
I've reported a few of these to MS, and have seen the problems go away on the next revision.
But since I can't wait for that, I figure out a way to get around the compiler bug by changing the code to avoid the bad path.

[pp4me]

Yes, and in what I'm doing, although it is at the other end of the scale in terms of the amount of hardware resources, efficiency is still tremendously important. No one wants to spend a ton of money on persistent memory devices if they can't get the astounding performance that those devices are capable of. However, getting that performance requires great attention to detail and really can't be done in any other language I'm aware of.

Well, there's always assembly language.

At my previous company, I actually had to do about half of my programming in assembly language for a vector processor. (C/C++ compilers have gotten quite good, but they're still not as efficient as hand-coded assembly in many cases.) It was interesting, to be sure, and a form of education in itself, but wow -- I don't think I ever want to do that again! C and C++ are about as low-level as I want to go now.

I remember thinking when I was programming in assembly language, why would anyone want to use a damn compiler when you can actually write code directly in machine language yourself? (I changed my own oil back then too).

Then again, I was known as the macro king so I was sort of writing my own compiler any way.

When C came along, I was immediately hooked and thought this was the way computers should be programmed. Took a while to demystify C++ and OOP but I was easily hooked on that too although I did miss the simplicity of C. I remember getting so frustrated switching from Turbo C to Visual C++ that I almost broke my hand slamming it on the desk one time. Ended up buying the "For Dummies" book which helped me see the light in addition to being a hilarious book.

Ended my career with Java writing web services. As C++ seemed to be getting more and more complicated all the time, I found it simpler to learn and use. I've been out of the business for 4 years now and haven't so much as thought about programming anything beyond a spread sheet but if I did, I would probably do it with Java.

No clue what the most popular languages are nowadays but there do seem to be LOTS of them to choose from.

[Vil]

Bet noone of you has done ABAP programming. I am certified one, though haven't programmed since ages ...