Goodbye

[Walter Bright]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Bios usually are self-written (how would the publisher know the author's 
> strengths better and be able to write about it better than the author 
> themself?), and the whole point of them is to make the person look good to 
> help sell a book (or whatever else). They're mini-resume's: the whole point 
> is for it to be a sales-sheet, so yea, of course it's going too look like 
> that. What do you expect? "Author Andrei is a mediocre programmer we picked 
> up off some random street in Boise."

The fact is, I recruited Andrei when I spotted him at a freeway off-ramp 
holding a cardboard sign "will code for food."


> Besides, if there are any programmers who have good reason to have an big 
> ego (Which I certainly haven't seen in Andrei), then Andrei would certainly 
> be one of them. And that's praise Andrei *didn't* write himself ;)

When I went to the ACCU conference last spring, they had a vendor room 
set up where people could sell stuff. One was a bookseller who was 
selling programming books. Prominently displayed was Andrei's "Modern 
C++ Design". This was published in 2001, 8 years ago. 8 years is an 
ETERNITY in this business, and for a bookseller to not only keep it in 
stock, but find it worthwhile to lug a box of them on his back to a 
conference along with a few handpicked other books speaks volumes about 
its quality.