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Comment by ilyagr | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps you should make chapter 3 free too? That's the kind of material is want to see before I decide if I like the language or the book.

Of course, you might have a good reason not to do it, but that was my first thought when looking at the web site.

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One of the things that can hook you into a new language is having a really well written introduction book that gives you the philosophy of the designers and the big picture while moving through the syntax and semantics.

The book is roughly 300 pages. Even with a careful reading that's only a few days invested.

For instance I read Roberto Ierusalimschys's Programming in Lua and Niklaus Wirth's Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. But have never really had a project which fit either of those languages. I still enjoyed the books.

That is the big advantage of getting books out on shelves, so people can look through them. That's harder to do with more independent works.

Now that I think about it, I use to buy programming books in University and just after (2005-ish), but I haven't really since. Even when I work places where we have a book budget; I never request anything. These days I read the documentation, and if I get stuck, I go to a stack exchange site.

Hi Dan

If it was up to me I would make the whole thing free. The publisher has to make their money somehow though :)

I was given the option to make two chapters free. I figured an intro to Nim and an advanced chapter were good choices.

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