This is not about a book per se – but I do love all the Pragmatic Bookshelf books I’ve read this far, and so a free magazine available on-line from these folks is awesome. They’ve got downloads available for this first edition in pdf, epub and mobi formats. That is also a big win as it means I can read them on my phone. Below is text cut from the press release for the new mag.

The Pragmatic Bookshelf, the innovative publisher of award-winning books by programmers for programmers, has launched a new magazine: PragPub.

PragPub editor Michael Swaine served for years as editor-in-chief and editor-at-large for the venerable Dr. Dobb’s Journal and coauthored the seminal personal computer history book, Fire in the Valley.

Michael says, “There is a huge demand for timely information on current programming issues, but conventional magazine publishing can’t keep up with the pace of change in software development. There are some wonderful blogs and wikis that address particular technologies or projects, but they tend to come and go, or serve an extremely niche audience. We’re hoping to strike a balance between a conventional magazine and a topical blog or wiki, capturing the benefits of professional editing and a regular publishing schedule of a magazine, and the responsiveness and sense of community of the blogs and wikis–the growing, worldwide Pragmatic community.”

The July issue is now available from the Pragmatic Programmers site. PragPub is published monthly and is free of charge.

Soon I should be reading Levi Grossman’s new book, The Magicians and offering up a review shortly after. It’s being billed as a Harry Potter for grown-ups and I have to confess I’m pretty excited to get my hands on it.

Until then, would be fans can dive into the world of the book well before it is released in August. The protagonist is a fan of the fantasy world of Fillory which you can explore now at that site. Fillory is the creation of Christopher Plover who now exists on the web. (I feel for any kid out there that runs across this and decides he’s going to do a report on Plover for school. Then again- based on some of what I’ve seen they may get a good grade.) And what modern school of wizardry wouldn’t have its own web page (click on the flower at the bottom.)

It’s interesting to see how the internet is providing a completely additional layer to this story. Hopefully the book deserves all this work, I’ll let you know. I just wish stuff like this had been around when I was in Junior Highschool saving my allowance for weeks to buy one of the cheaper guides to Middle Earth.

Hitting middle age has been an interesting time. I catch myself thinking about how well kids have it today and sounding a lot like my father. One difference is while my dad was happy to teach me about sports or cars, we never spent any time knocking out code together. I think he did realize that home computers were important and I will always be grateful for the Commodore Vic-20 be brought home one day. It was a substantial purchase for our household. I spent many days copying lines of basic from magazines and saving the results to cassette tapes. In my home today we have a considerably better situation, computing wise. There are usually a couple laptops running as well as the desktop machine upstairs. My kids take for granted what I found to be amazing and new. Still, that’s all pretty normal and I’d like to give them an opportunity to go deeper if they are so inclined, just like we give them opportunities to explore other skills and pursuits. With that in mind I brought a copy of Hello World! home a few weeks ago, and the response from my oldest has been surprisingly enthusiastic.

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