Ideas for a new book

December 21, 2011 18 Comments

The experience of writing my Matlab-Java book was truly exhilarating. The book is now officially published and several hundred copies have been shipped already, first in America and starting last week also in the rest of the world. I hope these will all arrive before Christmas – if not then please be patient a few more days, since the initial demand has apparently exceeded the printing expectations.
If you are one of those who have received the book, please be kind enough to write a review of it, in book sites such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
As promised, I will maintain the book’s webpage with an errata list and possibly more information, as they become available.

The question of a new book

As with any birth, the initial exhilaration completely overwhelms, letting me forget how hard it has been to write the book. So while this “high” lasts, I wanted to ask you my readers for your opinion regarding a possible future book.
Which of the following books by me, possibly co-authored with another writer, would you be interested to read and/or have in your library?

Professional Matlab application development
Professional Matlab GUI
Matlab performance tuning
Undocumented Matlab – the non-Java parts
Some other subject (please specify)
None of the above

Please choose only a single item, or prioritize your choices. It will be a book about only one of the above topics, not several topics. I’m not going to write another 700-page monster that takes 5 years to prepare…
There are of course many factors going into a decision about whether or not to enter a book-writing project. It is a multi-year commitment that requires lots of effort, time, focus, and attention to detail. It affects the writer in a way that influences the entire family. In fact, my wife has already voted an emphatic “NO!” on this subject, and I’m pretty ambivalent about this issue myself.
Please do let me know what you think in a short comment. Happy Holidays everyone!

Book

18 Responses

Nick December 21, 2011 at 20:07 Reply

I would love to see a book that was a hybrid of topics 1 and 2. Maybe that’s asking too much out of one book, I don’t know. It could also be that good books on those two topics exist already, but I think your particular take on it would be a worthwhile read.

Also, while I’m here, I wanted to add my sincere thanks for your efforts in building this website. Your articles have bailed me out of Matlab jams more time than I care to think about.
Royi December 22, 2011 at 01:04 Reply

I’d go for:
Matlab performance tuning
Ollie December 22, 2011 at 01:40 Reply

professional GUI programing interests me 🙂
since I can never create a good looking GUI
and it;s never as easy as VB does in creating GUI
Jan December 22, 2011 at 02:27 Reply

I’m definitely interested in topic number 3, since I’m doing a lot of numerical calculations, performance is a crucial aspect in my applications and Matlab is rather slow and has a lot of potential performance pitfalls. I’m also somewhat interested in topics number 1 and 4, but first I would have to know what hides under the term “professional” application and what non-Java undocumented features would the book cover.
Matt December 22, 2011 at 07:15 Reply

I think topics 1, 2 and 3 are worthy of their own books and I would buy all 3. I would especially be interested in seeing a good discussion of object oriented matlab and the use of events and listeners for both custom objects and listening to builtin objects (graphic objects especially).
Matthew December 22, 2011 at 09:22 Reply

I have to second Nick’s comment. I agree that a hybrid of 1 and 2 would be the most useful today. I still find Matlab’s UI capabilities very lacking compared to mainstream languages like C# or Java. The Matlab project I’m working on has grown organically for 15 years and is quite large (passing 2000 source files a while ago). We have a very good handle on maximizing performance of the code. The UI is still our weak spot.
Matt December 22, 2011 at 09:25 Reply

I second Nick’s thought. Both 1 and 2 would be definite buys for me, and a hybrid of the two would be wonderful. I like to spend as much of my time as possible writing the ‘guts’ of an application (data processing and what have you), so spending less time developing the slick user front end would be beneficial. I think you would be able to provide a great reference to designing the GUI that would make my development better and faster.

By the way, I very much appreciate your first book. It sits on my desk next to me as I type this. 🙂
Paul December 22, 2011 at 10:59 Reply

I very much look forward to reading your new book. On the topic of priority for a second book, my vote is for “2) Professional Matlab GUI”.

Sincerely,

Paul S
Nick December 22, 2011 at 15:01 Reply

A book on 1,2 and 3 – where can I put my preorder in?
oversky December 22, 2011 at 20:04 Reply

One vote for Matlab performance tuning
Mike Steinhaus December 23, 2011 at 01:28 Reply

I think (1) and (2) would be wonderful. May it is possible to deal with the problem writing the gui in Java/or C and invoke matlab code into it. I’m always very unhappy when deploying an application how the system deals with the matlab written GUI’s. It’s so slow. Very unprofessional.

Sincerely,

Mike
Yair Altman December 23, 2011 at 03:41 Reply

Thanks for all the feedback guys, but I’m not going to write another 700-page monster that would take me 5 years to write… Therefore, it will be a book about only one of the above topics, not a combination. With this in mind, please let me know which of the optional topics (if any) would be of interest to you. Many thanks for your time and feedback.
zhangjunhua December 23, 2011 at 08:22 Reply

Professional Matlab application development
yuk January 3, 2012 at 11:50 Reply

Professional Matlab application development
CaptainGoldo January 6, 2012 at 03:23 Reply

I would love to see a book about :
Professional Matlab GUI
I am quite satisfied with the code i write (partly thanks to you and i hope to your book once i receive it) but a professionnal-looking GUI would be a great help for the users i am in charge of.
Keep going !
Mehran January 19, 2012 at 11:24 Reply

I’m definitely going with Professional Matlab GUI.
Harry April 27, 2015 at 03:18 Reply

Dear Yair, I am certainly interested in Matlab GUI, but also a sort of 101 on OOP using Matlab, explaing the use of classes and methods, regards – Harry

Yair Altman April 27, 2015 at 04:27 Reply

@Harry – you can find a PDF primer on Matlab OOP in Matlab’s documentation section online.

I offer custom onsite Matlab training that includes a half-day or full day on Matlab OOP. Contact me for details if you are interested.

HTML tags such as <b> or <i> are accepted.
Wrap code fragments inside <pre lang="matlab"> tags, like this:

<pre lang="matlab">
a = magic(3);
disp(sum(a))
</pre>

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The question of a new book

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