Appropriately, the book itself is physically beautiful. And big: at 600 pages, I haven’t read most of the chapters yet. But I’ve been skimming a lot, and diving deep in some places. It’s already my favorite new computer programming book of the year, indeed of the last few years. I could name many chapters that delighted me, but lists of recommendations make the eyes glaze, so let’s go with just one: Chapter 24: Beautiful Concurrency, by Simon Peyton Jones, which was so absorbing it nearly made me miss my stop on the BART going to Berkeley the other day. I haven’t nearly read all 33 chapters yet, of course, so take that as an absolute recommendation, not a comparative one.

As for my own contribution (Chapter 2: Subversion’s Delta Editor: Interface as Ontology), I just got the XML master back from O’Reilly, and I’ll be putting it online under a free license as soon as I get a chance. [Update: this is now done.]

Congratulations to Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, the two editors. This one’s a keeper.