I was really unsure what the result would be -- I definitely shared your concerns when I started.
The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me.
In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)
Yup, that is absolutely why I do this. I'm not sure it would be possible to keep this up without an intense curiosity about these topics :)
There is also a selfish aspect to it. By writing the best book that I am capable of, I learn this stuff much better than I would by playing around with it for a day or two.
Motivations and results feed each other and (hopefully) produce great results.
Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach.
For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heavily on my co-author (Nick Gauthier), who is battle tested with Backbone.js. So, again, I think we are in agreement.
That said, even the intro books are living books. I plan on refreshing and adding as the technology evolves and I as become battle tested (I'm working on edition 1.1 of The SPDY Book now). So over time, I hope to get closer to the ideal tome on the subjects.
That is a fair point. I had not run SPDY in a heavily utilized production environment. I'll agree that there are things that I would learn had I done so, but I would definitely argue that this is the only way to learn something in depth.
Gotcha. The title is intentionally over the top and definitely worthy of, at least, a skeptical attitude. I do have some awesome pancake recipes though...
I've been coding since the mid-nineties and had been content to be good/competent. From there to book writer is, I think, a natural outgrowth of the chain posts.
I know Nick IRL. He had previously toyed with the idea of doing a book. I can't speak for him, but I think he signed up after seeing what I did with The SPDY Book. It worked out well IMO. He took the more in-depth ones, I took the more foundation recipes and then we proof read each other.
Much thanks. I've definitely appreciated the encouragement along the way. But mostly it's cool to know that my posts have helped. Makes it that much more worthwhile :)
Yah, that's actually where I got the original idea: http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html (should have made that more clear). I'm never going to reach Seinfeld levels, but that's all right.
Ah, but I think that's the point. My understanding of the topics is anything but superficial. If you follow along with my daily posts, I think you can see me work through initial infatuation, recognition of limitations, and finally deeper understanding.
To be sure, I could know more. But I think you're being dismissive by characterizing this as superficial.
I agree that the PDF formatting leaves something to be desired. We are using the OSS git-scribe (https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe) toolchain for producing PDF, Mobi, and ePub. I have already put a ton of work into the toolchain to make it better (http://japhr.blogspot.com/search/label/git-scribe). Most of that work, however, was to help get the Mobi and ePub versions up to snuff.
I plan to take a week or so in the very near future to again focus on improving the toolchain. Hopefully some, if not all, of your valid criticisms will get addressed.
Dang. Fixed the TOC. Thanks for pointing that out. Nick and I will discuss making the intro available.
We are targeting intermediate / advanced Backbone.js developers. That is, you should read this after you've read the tutorials and after your first Backbone app.
The recipes are real life lessons learned from a highly traffic'd Backbone site. These recipes comprise what we have learned as we made the leap to the next level of Backbone coding. We hope they will help others do the same.
If you have _any_ problems, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. We will work our collective butts off to make sure that everything gets processed correctly.
There seems to have been a delay in Google Checkout itself earlier this evening. Some purchases took upwards of 60 seconds to go through.
Everything looks OK now, though. The most recent purchases were processed in less than 7 seconds.
Sorry for the hassle. No worries, though. We will make it right by our readers!
The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me.
In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)