I'm not supposed to be writing this

I'm not supposed to be working on this blog post right now. I've stayed late at the office under the pretense of working on "the book." It's the book about creating custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide, and I've been working on it for quite a while.

I enjoy writing (that's a good thing), but writing a book about a computer-related topic is challenging. Since the time that I embarked on the project, we have shipped two additional releases of SAS Enterprise Guide. And two releases of the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. And the primary tool for developing custom tasks, Microsoft Visual Studio, has had three major updates plus the addition of "Express" (free) editions. All of these events have an impact on the content of the book, because we want the finished product to be as usable and relevant as possible. (And it's not an excuse, but my progress was interrupted by another writing project as well.)

All of this forward progress in the software is great for our customers and for developers, but it makes the content of a technical book appear as an extremely fast moving target. For those of you who are waiting on this book, thank you for bearing with me. While you're waiting you might be interested in the information that is available on the support site. There is recently updated reference documentation and a collection of examples; the motivated among you should be able to make some sense out of what's there and begin to build your own custom tasks.

Okay, I've procrastinated with this blog post long enough. It's time to back to the real work.