HOP now or HOP later?

xdg has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: HOP now or HOP later? by Old_Gray_Bear (Bishop) on Aug 30, 2005 at 23:48 UTC
There will always be errata. I'd suggest getting the second printing, just to reduce the number of the errata pages you tuck into the back cover. Waiting for a third printing is a mugs bet: HOP is a printed by Morgan Freeman, they may not issue a third printing unless there is a really massive demand for the second. The first printing of HOP was something like two-thirds pre-sales. A lot of people ordered it online with 'ship it to me when you get it'. That demand really surprised the folks at MF, they are not used to 'text books' selling out like Fiction. Unlike O'Reilly, they don't print in small batches, so they can't fold errata in at will. MF did a first printing of 1,500 (if I recall correctly); the second may be as large. (MJD had the actual number in one of the final postings on the plover-hop list, but I don't have the message handy.) I have a first edition on my book-shelf here at work, with the errata sheet tucked inside. I can live with that. Eventually, the entire body of HOP will be available on line for perusing/downloading. (Eventually being early next year, as I recall.) That may well serve as the 'third and final' edition. As to is it worth it? I think yes. Slogging through HOP took me a couple of months. I can't read tech-lit like I read SF or a Mystery. I read a few pages at a time and let it percolate a while before I start the next section. I read through HOP to get a feeling for a different way of approaching a couple of different classes of problems. I find that I sometimes have to really work at understanding MJD's code, but the Ideas he implements in his code are facinating; and, once I see what he is driving at, the techniques turn out to be aplicable to a lot of the stuff I am facing at work. I expect to revisit the 'parsing your own language' section again and again as we rewrite a particularly old and convoluted protocol we use on our internal server farm. There is a lot of neat stuff going on under the covers in HOP. There are a lot of neat little tricks in HOP that I can borrow and use. To me, learning how tail-recursion works and seeing it in action again and again was worth the price of the book and the long wait for it to appear. ================================================= Update -- The publisher is "Morgan Kaufman", not "Morgan Freeman"! (I saw 'March of the Penguins' over the weekend....) ---- I Go Back to Sleep, Now. OGB	[reply]
Re: HOP now or HOP later? by Dominus (Parson) on Sep 01, 2005 at 13:57 UTC
Old_Gray_Bear said: Waiting for a third printing is a mugs bet: HOP is a printed by Morgan Kaufmann, they may not issue a third printing unless there is a really massive demand for the second. The first printing of HOP was something like two-thirds pre-sales. A lot of people ordered it online with 'ship it to me when you get it'. That demand really surprised the folks at MK, they are not used to 'text books' selling out like Fiction. Unlike O'Reilly, they don't print in small batches, so they can't fold errata in at will. What is your source for this information? -- Mark Dominus Perl Paraphernalia	[reply]
Re: HOP now or HOP later? by 5mi11er (Deacon) on Aug 30, 2005 at 21:45 UTC
I think it's a pretty good book. I've managed to get a bit more than half way through it. I must admit I haven't actually played with the code presented, but it certainly makes one think about how to write code such that you can use it later for something completely different from what you might be thinking about immediately. For that it I certainly ++ the book. It also has a good description of how to undo recursion for performance gains. Since getting about 1/3 the way through, I've not been able to figure out where it's going such that it might benefit me. Sure it's useful if you happen to have to deal with infinite or nearly infinite lists, but I don't, so I'm not sure if the rest of the book is going to ever benefit me. I'm hoping so, and all knowledge is a good thing, but I'm hoping to learn more that I can apply to my life in the near future. I could cheat and skim ahead, but I haven't yet... So, if someone else might know about the lessons awaiting me toward the end of the book, I'm listening. Oh, and as ghenry said, the errata is online, and the code is online, so mistakes in either version shouldn't make too much difference if you read the online info. -Scott Update: fixed sentance about what ghenry said...	[reply]
Re: HOP now or HOP later? by ghenry (Vicar) on Aug 30, 2005 at 21:39 UTC
Well, as you point out in your post, the errata lists are online, so I say it doesn't matter. Just read the list for whichever you buy ;-) Walking the road to enlightenment... I found a penguin and a camel on the way..... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!	[reply]
Re^2: HOP now or HOP later? by Anonymous Monk on Aug 30, 2005 at 21:46 UTC
And if you're content with just having the errata online, you might wait until the whole book is online (or at least that's the rumor).	[reply]
Re: HOP now or HOP later? by Dominus (Parson) on Sep 01, 2005 at 13:46 UTC
If you look closely at the errata list, you will see that almost all the "errors" are actually completely trivial matters, like "at the end of the line, `))});` should be `)) });`", or a missing comma in the text. All technical books contain a large number of this sort of error. You would probably never notice most of them unless they were pointed out. One of the drawbacks of having a public errata page is that it points out all the errors, and that makes people aware of them; then people wonder if perhaps the book has an unusually large number of errors compareed to other books. But no; other books have the same number of errors. You just aren't aware of them, because they don't have public errata pages. If I weren't so compulsive about listing absolutely every trivial little spacing error on the web pages, you would probably not have heard that HOP had a lot of errors. Both printings are extremely good quality, and the differences between the first and second printings are trivial. -- Mark Dominus Perl Paraphernalia	[reply]
Re^2: HOP now or HOP later? by xdg (Monsignor) on Sep 01, 2005 at 16:31 UTC
I know most tech books (and textbooks) have errors. That said, I really dislike keeping an errata sheet and cross-referencing. I really don't mind formatting errors, but from what I've heard, the content of the book is pretty deep. And the list of "substantial technical" errors in the first edition seemed long -- so I was curious if people really thought it mattered. I wouldn't want to get lost following some intricate example only to find out that I'm lost because of an error. With the second printing out, I think I'm going to focus on finding a copy. To that end, any suggestions on a reliable source for the second printing? I've checked three big bookstores here in NYC; two didn't have it and one had three copies of the first printing. Has anyone gotten the second printing from an online source or are they still shipping first printings? -xdg Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.	[reply]
Re^3: HOP now or HOP later? by Dominus (Parson) on Sep 02, 2005 at 03:16 UTC
xdg asks: any suggestions on a reliable source for the second printing? I don't know for sure, but I imagine that if you ordered it from the MKP web site (here) you would get a second printing, or if you were really worried about it, you could call them up and specifically request one. While this might work, I think it would be a waste of time. As I said before, the first and second printings are nearly identical. -- Mark Dominus Perl Paraphernalia	[reply]
Re^3: HOP now or HOP later? by tlm (Prior) on Sep 01, 2005 at 20:17 UTC
I wouldn't want to get lost following some intricate example only to find out that I'm lost because of an error. I'm only 2/3 of the way into it (first printing, no less), but so far the scenario you describe hasn't happened for me. the lowliest monk	[reply]
Re^2: HOP now or HOP later? by blazar (Canon) on Sep 01, 2005 at 14:31 UTC
But no; other books have the same number of errors. or at least (approximately) the same density, I guess...	[reply]