> How does "Computer Programming with the Nim Programming Language" by some > dude qualify as a book? It is neither in print nor it does have a PDF/ebook > variant, from what I can tell. (While some other resources have those, and > are qualified as tutorials)
It is not easy to write a moderate reply... Well, I am only a dude from Germany, with a PhD in laser physics, who has also studies some basic mathematics and CS. Not such a famous person like you, who has written so much best selling books and has contributed so famous work to the Nim compiler and core libraries, all as a free gift to the community. I really admire you. But seriously, Araq is a bright one, no doubt. For the history of the book: From 2014, when I discovered Nim, up to 2018 maybe, we had some Kids and beginners in the community, who asked sometimes about beginner-friendly, freely accessible tutorials and books. So in late 2019, I finally decided to write something. Of course it was clear from the beginning, that earning some money with a book would be hard, but I had some hope that the Nim project may grow. I agree, that in best case, only native speaking experts should write books about something. That it why I hesitated so long to write the async, threading and metaprogramming sections. I was hoping someone other would write that. Note, that from spring 2020 to the end of the year, the book was MIT licensed. Some people forked it, but no one contributed. Then I decided in early 2021 to remove license and to write the remainder myself. And I have fixed a lot of spelling and grammar errors by tools like langtool, grammarly and quillbot. It is not easy for me to judge the quality of the book. I think the content is OK. Language and grammar may be not that great still. In the current state, I would give it maybe 2.5 stars in the 5 stars max amazon rating. Before selling, or even printing, I would like to hire a editor or professional english proofreader. But I was told, that serious ones would take for a 400 pages book between 5,000 to 10,000 Euro. Which is justified in my opinion. But it is clear that selling the book will never generate that amount. Not for the current state of the Nim project and all the trouble. And I do not intend to pay that sum myself, I need my money for more important other purposes. Maybe, in a few years tools like GPT will be able to fully rewrite books and to translate them into other languages, so I could really save my money. For the initial suggestion in Araqs post, after he edited it, that I should create my own forum. Yes, I discussed that idea with a few friends in the last months. Some form of a friendly community forum would be nice. But the official forum has already not that much traffic, so in my opinion that makes no much sense. But I will try to not write here too much "ramblings". And feel free to just ban me, it is no problem for me to belong into the outlaws group around Disruptek and mothers.
