Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Early reviews
The early GWT in Practice reviews seem to be positive. There is only one at Amazon but a few other sites have noted it, and I have seen thread posts in several different groups now where other people say they really like it too. In all the initial word on the street seems to be good.

That's pretty rewarding. I know we won't be able to please everyone, and before it's over we will have our share of negative reviews (it seems everything now in every context is picked apart in some way or another), but it's just good to know that somebody somewhere actually likes it ;).

GWT 1.5 and GWT in Practice
One other thing I want to note for the record is that even though GWT 1.5 is about to drop, I still feel like GWT in Practice is very relevant. And, I am not just pimping my own ride, really. Many of the key concepts we cover about the architectural approach GWT uses, and the new paradigm (cough, forgive me) that GWT brings still apply, and I suspect will still apply even at GWT 3.0 and beyond.

Also, truth be told, 98% of the syntax and usage is the same in 1.5 (see the upgrade guide). For the most part the examples in the book all work well on 1.5 (in some cases with minor changes, mainly for RPC stuff), and the concepts they are teaching certainly still apply. I am going to try to update all the code samples for 1.5 and make that available as a download soon.

It's actually pretty remarkable how many of the FAQ and tip items in the GWT 1.5 documentation look like they could have come right from the book (not that they did, I am not suggesting that, just that great minds thing alike, or . . . a broken clock is right twice a day).

The lost episodes
We have several chapters that are in nearly complete form that were cut from the book due to size. History, debugging and profiling, and a few other things got axed. As soon as I can I plan to make a pass to clean those up and make them available as "bonus" chapters for free. I will likely post them here and send them to Manning to link on their site as well.

Talk like a pirate day
Oh, and it's a bit of a strange feeling to see your own work start showing up on the torrentz. It's inevitable I suppose (and I shouldn't really draw attention to it, but it's not like it's a secret to anyone that wants to try to find it). I encourage you though, if you like your "evaluation copy" to please buy the book - it's pretty cheap for a legit copy, and we worked hard on it for nearly two years - so on and so forth, tip your waitress, try the veal.