Books

It’s been a while since I had a chance to write something of a book length. I have ideas for future writings, but no firm plans as of today. Maybe I should try some other formats instead? We’ll see.

This book is an extension of the previous work of the principal author. I was more like a co-pilot here. What was interesting to me is to automate the process. All our articles were created in Excel sheets, and special macros were used to export and format them according to the usual dictionary structure, and to create cross-references.

This is the English edition of my older book on theory of computing. Diving into a world of English-language commercial publishing was a very interesting experience. The amount of work invested was enormous, but I think it was worth it.

This is simply my PhD thesis published as a book by VDM Verlag, which specializes in such kinds of projects. At that time I hoped it would give it some additional visibility. Not sure the publisher managed to sell anything, but I don’t really mind.

As a PhD student in St. Petersburg I had to pass a so-called "teaching practice", which is usually done by teaching a certain subject to first- or second-year students. I couldn’t really do it because I was actually living in Finland by that time. So we we struck a deal with our Head of Department: instead of teaching, I had to compose a collection of topics for student courseworks.

I could have simply copied topics from other sources, but reading available literature left me dissatisfied. I started recalling problems from my own past experience, modifying book materials and inventing new exercises.

I got my university paperwork done, but it was vexing to work just for a "pass" grade. After some thinking I decided to turn my little collection into a book. Along the way it became more "solution-oriented", which made it more interesting for a general audience.

I find theory of computing fascinating. It goes straight to the point: what is algorithm? what is problem? why one problem is easy to solve, while another is hard? how to create a machine that solves problems? Theory of computing helped to design numerous everyday algorithms and models. However, most books on theory of computing are quite theory- and math-heavy, which might repel many coders. I think it is unfortunate, so I decided to write a book that would both introduce the basic ideas of theory of computing and discuss some practical tools.

This book is very dear to me as my first independent work in spite all its drawbacks. The topic of "entertaining" programming is still close to my heart, so I will definitely revisit it some time later. My target is "step two" in our trade. There are many books explaining how to start programming, but there are few sources showing what to do next. Some topics like "write a game" are easy to come up with, other are less obvious. My challenge is to explore some possible directions and to show how diverse and yet equally fascinating they are.

This book is purely technical and not too creative in terms of content. However, it was my chance to join a real book project as an author, and back then I thought it was a really cool thing. So I put great efforts and spent a lot of time working on this title. We have simply divided responsibilities by chapters, so each of us could focus on his own part. A reasonably solid work, but nothing beyond that.

My name isn’t on the title and yet this book is in the list here. Let’s say it was a little side job aimed to prove that I can be a real author by contributing some material to an existing book. After all, I was just a 3rd year student, so my credit wasn’t high.

This book is a makeover of an earlier work "Microsoft Excel 2000", which is, in turn, a makeover of "Microsoft Excel 97". Since Excel 2002 (aka Excel XP) was a very slight makeover of Excel 2000 itself, my job in was simple: to ensure that the existing text corresponds to reality. In addition, the authors wanted to have new screenshots and examples to add some market value to the book, which actually required the most effort.

I was in charge of several chapters only, and I was promised a per-chapter payment. One of the chapters was about a tool called Microsoft Map, which (as we found out later) silently disappeared from the final build of Excel 2002. I wasn’t happy with the prospect of losing my Microsoft Map honorarium, so I found a way to extract the tool from Office 2000 and reuse it in Office 2002. So we reproached Microsoft for their rash decision in the book, explained how to undo it, and preserved the Microsoft Map chapter.