Real-World Functional Programming: Completed and printed!

If you're following my blog or if you're interested in F# or functional programming in .NET, you probably noticed that I was working on a book Real-World Functional Programming. At some point, we called it Functional Programming for the Real-World, but then we changed the title back to a better sounding version Real-World Functional Programming (subtitle With examples in F# and C#). The book is also reason for a lower number of blog posts over the last year. Over the last month or so, we were doing the final edits, reviewing the final PDF version (I fixed quite a lot minor issues, synchronized book with the Beta 2 F# release and so on). Anyway, before a few days, I received the following email (as an author, I receive the same emails as those who ordered the book through the Manning Early Access Program, so that I can see what we're sending to our dear readers):

Dear Tomas Petricek, We are pleased to announce that Real-World Functional Programming is now complete! As a MEAP subscriber you can download your copy of the finished ebook right now! (...) This ebook is the final version, identical to the softbound edition, which is currently being printed and will be available on December 24. If you chose the printed book option when you originally subscribed, we'll ship it to you automatically—no action required from you.

Finally finished!

Yes, that's right. The book is finally completed and as far as I know, it has been printed last week! If you already ordered the book, you won't receive it before Christmas, but it should come shortly after. I can't wait to see the book actually printed. The transition from the Word drafts I initially wrote to a final PDF version was already felt fantastic and I thought "It looks like a real book!" Among other things, there are now graphical arrows with comments inside listings, which looks really great and makes code listings much easier to read. Now I can look forward to seeing the actual book. Maybe I'm too conservative, but I have to say that I'm really glad that I wrote the book before everything is going to be published just electronically!

Interesting links

Here is a couple of links that you may found interesting if you want to look inside the book, download some free content and source code or if you're considering buying a copy.

• About the Book - The official Manning homepage contains links to all resources. Among other things, it contains the preface and about the book sections, which tell you what is the book about and what you can expect from it.
• Free Chapters - When I was writing the book, the draft of the first chapter was available for a preview at Manning web site. However, for completed books, Manning publishes two sample chapters. Even though I believe that chapter 1 is a great introduction and motivation for reading the book, we decided to use different chapters as samples. This means that you can read the following two chapters for free:
  • Chapter 4 shows a first real-world F# example. It uses various .NET and F# libraries to implement a program for drawing pie charts. It requires some understanding of functional lists and tuples as well as recursion (which is all introduced in chapter 3).
  • Chapter 12 is far more advanced. It starts by showing how to work with collections of data using LINQ and F# sequence expressions. However, it shows that this isn't a built-in feature and can be used for "changing the meaning of code" in a more general sense (if you heard of monads than this is the right chapter for you!)
• Foreword - The book is written primarily for C# and .NET developers, so when I was looking for someone to write the foreword, I thought that the choice could reflect this focus. So, instead of asking someone from the F# team, I asked Mads Torgersen who is a C# Language PM at Microsoft. His nice foreword is an interesting point of view at functional programming from a C# language designer.
• Source Code - I uploaded the source code (including all the completed sample applications, library for functional programming in C#, etc.) to an MSDN Code Gallery page Real-World Functional Programming Samples, so you'll find the most recent version of source code there. In addition, there are a few examples that are referenced from the printed book. I'm planning to publish these here on my blog as well as on the book's web site.
• Get it Now - Finally, if you want to buy the book, you can order it directly from Manning, or go to Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or your favorite book store. In every case, you'll receive the book after Christmas and you can get an electronic version too.

More from Manning

The screenshot on the right shows Real-World Functional Programming listed on the Manning homepage as a hot new release - if you go to their web site, you can no longer find my book in the right column (Manning Early Access), but it has moved to the left column (New and Recent Releases)!

Anyway, I also wanted to draw your attention to a special action that Manning is organizing this month. You have a chance to win an ebook every day and there are also special actions each day (also, there were some MEGADEALS on Mondays, so it may be a good idea to check the web site next Monday :-). I don't have any insider information, but if you want to buy my book with discount, you may want to check it out!

• Manning Countdown to 2010
• You can also follow ManningBooks @@ Twitter

That's all about the book for today! I hope I'll have more time for blogging now that the book is finally done. I'm planning to write about a few topics that I briefly touched in the book, but didn't have the space to fully explain them. I'm also working on a series about using the Accelerator project that allows you to program GPUs in any managed language... The first article from the series will be available in a few days.