I’m writing another book!

Hey everyone, I've finally turned this blog into a book! Or, rather, I am deep in the process of turning this blog into a book. Yes, it's about 20 years, give or take, after I first thought of doing so, but who's counting? The title is, of course:

Fabulous Adventures In Data Structures And Algorithms

The first few chapters are now available as part of the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP); the idea of this program is that you pay now and get access to the book as I finish writing it. I plan to finish by the spring of 2026. That way you get access early, and I get to test the code in production. The source code is at:

https://github.com/ericlippert/FabulousAdventures.

Even better, everything is 50% off STARTING RIGHT NOW and going until November 13th, so go engage in commerce!

If you have questions or suggestions or any constructive feedback at all, you can leave it as a comment here or on Manning's forum for book comments.

I was not expecting to write another book. Here's how it happened:

Over my career I've been a technical editor for a lot of the programming book publishers as a fun hobby that pays for itself; last year Manning asked me if I was interested in helping edit a book not about programming, but rather a book about writing about programming, and of course I jumped at the chance. Cynthia Dunlop and Piotr Sarna wrote an insightful (and surprisingly funny) book; editing Writing For Developers was one of the most enjoyable side gigs I ever had.

After we got that book into production at the end of last year, the editor in charge of it asked me if I had any ideas for books about the current Microsoft developer ecosystem. Sadly, I've been out of that loop for more than a decade now, so I don't have a good sense of what is current. Well then, is there any other kind of book that you think is missing from the current market?

I'm occasionally asked by development editors at various publishers if I'd write them yet another review the data structures and algorithms that you learned in school, forgot about, and now need to brush up on your skills for an interview" book. I am not interested in that! Many of those books are very good. That there is a market demand for more of them is perhaps a symptom that the industry is still not great at interviewing. But I am not interested in writing another one.

You know, I said to the editor, if hypothetically I were to write another programming book, which I absolutely do not want to do, it would be:

_{(Cover mockup by Editor Jonathan.)}

The title needs work but can you write me a proposal showing what the table of contents for that book would look like?

A clever editor used his rhetorical judo skills to make me write a book proposal, which then got shown to a bunch of editors and industry people some of whom I thought were my friends, and those jerks all recommended that Manning convince me to write the book. Which they did.

More seriously though: long-time readers of my blog know that expanding my personal toolbox of programming techniques was key to my career growth, and that it's important to me to share those tools with others. This blog was one of the main ways I did that in the last two decades, and I am excited to have the opportunity to reach a new audience.

I've spent the last few months reflecting on old blog articles and thinking about the topics I never got around to writing about here, and it's been a lot of fun getting back into writing after a long, long break. More on that later. For now, please check out the MEAP edition, and let me know what you think!