FBA/ABF
NEWS/SWEN
By Cynthia Kirk
Cynthia Kirk is a columnist for eTechNotes. Download
the PDF file for this article.
Everyone’s talking about . . . the boffo success of the
annual SIGCSE conference which, this year, was held February
21-25 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Franklin, Beedle & Associates
had a great time there with a Las Vegas-style booth (have I got
a bridge for you!); cheerleaders running around in FBA/SIGCSE
logo-wear; and special guests Bill Gates, new Board Chair at
FBA (yeah, that’d make Jim Leisy real happy), and Stephen
King, who’s just agreed to write his word-processing and
Internet-sales memoirs for FBA.
Seriously, not only did FBA authors—Jerry Mead (Bucknell
University) and Anil Shende (Roanoke College), Persuasive Programming;
Rick Mercer (University of Arizona), Computing Fundamentals with
C++; Ed C. Epp (Intel Corporation), Prelude to Patterns in Computer
Science Using Java; and Lewis Barnett (University of Richmond)
and Joe Kent (University of Richmond), Basic Java Programming:
A Laboratory Approach—have prominent places on the conference
speaking schedule, but two major aspects of the convention seem
to indicate that FBA books and authors are right on the money
with the shifting computer science curriculum.
To wit, interest in Java and in Java-related books—such
as those by Epp & Barnett and Kent—remains high as more
and more computer science departments adopt Java as the introductory
programming language. When the CS department at the University
of Texas, Austin—one of the three largest universities in
the country—decides Java is the coming thing, I guess you
could say that’s a strong trend. And when the conference’s
keynote speaker, Allen Tucker (Bowdoin College), calls for more
rigorous standards in the undergraduate curriculum and you’ve
got a hot title—by Mead and Shende—that speaks to those
higher standards, you might claim a clear consensus.
On the way to the convention, Jim stopped in Fredericksburg,
Virginia, where he and Field Editor Steve Mossberg caroused with
authors Ernie Ackermann and Karen Hartman for a couple of days.
One of the highlights: visiting a warehouse in the industrial
part of town where Ernie’s son, Oliver, a bass player, rehearses
with his hot!hot!hot! band Skywave. Hey, they’ve even got
a CD. Check it out at www.killerrockandroll.com.
While there, Jim presented Ernie and Karen with handsome, leather-bound
copies of Searching and Researching on the Internet and World
Wide Web in honor of FBA’s 16th anniversary. This is a treat
all FBA authors can look forward to this year.
Other quick items . . . Adam Webber (University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee) has signed on to write a book on modern programming
languages for junior/senior level courses. Since the classic
texts, while revered, are woefully out of date, this is good
news for anyone responsible for those courses. FBA is planning
for a spring 2002 publication date. Carolyn Gillay’s Windows
Millennium Edition: Concepts and Examples is hot off the press
and ready for sampling. And speaking of new additions, Brett
Tjaden and his wife welcomed their first child on January 29.
A big, healthy boy, Jefferson Locke Tjaden. Some authors will
do anything to get a deadline extended! And if you haven’t
checked it out yet, we give four stars to former FBAer Bill DeRouchey’s
wonderfully wry, slice-of-life email essays called “fluxion,”
www.fluxion.com. David
Sedaris, watch out!
And so it goes as FBA/ABF seeks to find readers—and writers—of
its books in every appropriate market, North, East, West, South/South,
West, East, North. |
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