Challenges in writing a programming book

The author says that the idea of writing a book about frameworks grew out of a series of posts and ended up becoming “The Framework Field Guide”, a trilogy that he is making free. To do that, he spent more than two years organizing the material, creating the book website, rebuilding the blog platform, writing the first volume, and preparing code examples, all while keeping his job as an engineering team lead.

Reading notes

#

• Writing a book is slow and involves much more than drafting chapters, because the project ended up requiring content reorganization, a marketing site, a publishing platform, editing, and code examples.
• The author says book sales are difficult and that the effort may pay less than consulting, in addition to forcing you to think about a low price, which devalues the work, or a high one, which puts readers off.
• He sums up that you need to write from your own motivation and stay resilient, because the result may be worth the effort.
• Developers usually skim, so articles work better when they are short, split up with images, bold and italic emphasis, lists, and code.
• Section titles need to clearly say what will be learned, because funny titles may be ignored.
• The author recommends commenting code inside the block itself, since many people copy and paste examples and learn by adjusting what they see.
• He states that video content tends to have a higher return for developers than text, citing the difference between the views on one of his articles and a Theo video on YouTube.
• In the end, he says producing content is laborious, but publishing a book can improve your résumé, bring pride, and help other people learn.