Making a book on 7 languages in 7 weeks

I’ve signed up to write a book for the Pragmatic Press called Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. The languages are set now. They are:

* Ruby
* Io
* Scala
* Erlang
* Clojure
* Haskell
* Prolog

With this list, I did the following:

* I wanted at least 3 paradigms. (There are 4).
* I wanted to take one comfortable language to get people in tune with the style. I push Ruby all of the way into the metaprogramming space in one chapter.
* I pushed hard to work at least 4 functional languages into the mix. (Scala is more of a hybrid, but it will make for a gentle introduction.)
* I wanted at least one prototype language. I didn’t want to do JavaScript because I really wanted to get to the core of what Prototype programming really is in a single chapter, and Io does a pretty good job of that with minimal syntax.
* I included Prolog to introduce yet another paradigm that will stretch some readers.

I’m finishing up the first pass through the Io language chapter as we speak. It’s been a real mind bender for me, and the community is great.

Continue reading over at dzone...