By Erin Engelson

Senior Ian Langworth may be one of the only students on campus who sees college textbooks as a source of income, not a drain.

Although the computer science and psychology major still has to shell out money for his books each semester, he has written and published a textbook of his own.

“Perl: A Developer’s Notebook” was published by O’Reilly Books in August and can be found in the computer section of most bookstores.

“Man, the first time I saw it in a bookstore, that was cool,” Langworth said.

Though his book is a computer programming manual, Langworth defies the typical computer nerd stereotype. He plays the bass guitar, and to balance out his geek qualities he played football in high school, he said.

Langworth first considered writing his book during his middler year writing class in fall 2004. He contacted computer science professor Richard Rasala and the two began working together.

“I’d say what Ian has done is extraordinarily unusual for an undergrad,” Rasala said. “It’s very hard to find more than a small number of undergrads that have done this.”

Langworth’s writing was interrupted in November 2004 when he traveled to Atlanta to attend the annual Large Installation Systems Administration (LISA) conference. There, he got his big break.

“I met Allison Randall, an editor for O’Reilly,” Langworth said. “We talked and she told me to send her a proposal, which I wrote over winter break and sent in.”

Randall liked the proposal and assigned Langworth a co-author.

“I really had to book it – no pun intended – to get it done in four months. The editors were great. They took what I wrote and really polished it,” he said.

In March, O’Reilly sent Langworth a picture of the book’s cover.

“That was my ‘Holy shit, this is real’ moment,” he said.

The book was published and released in August 2005, and the feedback Langworth has received has been mostly good.

The book is nearly sold out on www.amazon.com, and though some reader reviews deem the book “totally useless,” the majority of reviews were positive. One review called the book “easy, concise and fun.”

Langworth said he has been interested in computers for as long as he can remember and said he wrote the book as a labor of love.

“I wanted to make a contribution to a community that has been really cool to me,” he said.

He said he didn’t do it for the money, either. Though he received an advance and royalties from O’Reilly, he said he’s “not driving a Ferrari.”

Langworth’s love is computers, but writing has a special significance for him. His father, Richard, is a published author who writes about World War II history and classic cars.

“My dad is a great writer, but I do have one up on him. I got published at a younger age than him,” Langworth said. “He was 27. I’m 23.”

Though he would like to write more, Langworth said it is definitely not easy. The effort he has put into this project is appreciated by professors like Rasala as well as other university staff.

“We love that he got published. It’s great PR for the university,” said Northeastern Media Relations Specialist Renata Nyul. “It’s the perfect example of what kind of accomplishments a student can achieve with the resources available here at Northeastern.”

Langworth may be the only undergraduate author at Northeastern, but students won’t see his book in classrooms anytime soon.

The book is a series of labs that test common problems in Perl, a programming language.

“Northeastern is more of a theory school, the book is purely practical,” he said.

In fact, software professionals will make much more use of the book than computer science students. With O’Reilly considered the premiere computer science book publisher, Langworth’s book should be very successful for that demographic, Rasala said.

“O’Reilly is really the cream of the crop for computer science. This is not just any publisher,” Rasala said.

With no immediate plans to write another book, Langworth said he is just enjoying his last semester as an undergraduate. While many seniors are scrambling to figure out what they’ll be doing with their lives, Langworth already has a published book on his resum