use Perl

So, the publisher I idolize said I could write a book about the language I idolize, pitching it at the people I think have been fairly poorly served by the offerings hitherto available (nobody's fault; this particular target audience is by its nature destined to ride at the back of the bus). So I wrote it, and it's now out in the wild, and I braced myself for the attack of the right-thinking folks who view this audience as undeserving of a good book, or who think my book doesn't qualify as such, or who just like to criticize.

And nothing happened. No one noticed.

Reality is like that, I guess. So I went back to my day job, and time passed, and I had a few minutes to kill yesterday, so I went to Google and looked to see what was up with people referring to my book, and lo and behold, a few people had.

Like hfb, who pointed out its existence to davorg in response to his journal entry proposing a book that is, I think, pretty darn close to what I was trying to do with mine. Sadly, I wasn't paying attention at the time, so I missed my chance to chime in.

(Note to self: If suddenly find self in alternate reality in which not happily married, undesirable, and with no particular reason to think she'd respond at all favorably, remember to propose marriage to hfb.)

And I found a few reviews on the Web. Like this one, which is short but very positive, and this one, which is much more detailed, and finds fault in several areas, while still being positive enough to make me happy.

Meanwhile, my obsessively-monitored rankings at that evil bookseller's site continue to show the book to be largely unpurchased. And I have to think, based on the nice things people have said when they've actually looked at it, that it's just that nobody knows the thing exists, or assumes (as davorg appears to) that it's something different than it actually is. Or maybe it's that its intended audience doesn't obsessively track the latest O'Reilly offerings, like I do.

Oh well. Sigh. Back to reality.

John