February 2006
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
6h 16m
English
I'm sure that this happens to every author. You write a book, submit the final manuscript to your publisher, and then wait. Finally, after a long time, you get a package in the mail containing your author's copies.
You pull out a copy of your brand-new book and just can't wait to show it to someone. Your wife, your friend, an innocent bystander—it doesn't matter. You just want someone to see it. So you hand them the book, they open it to a random page, and then they say, "I found a mistake...."
One of the worst moments in my life occurred just after I wrote the book Perl for C Programmers. I handed my first book to my wife, who opened it up and said testily, "Who's Karen?"
She was looking at the dedication, which began: ...