This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by Jared Richardson.
Original Post: Writing for The Pragmatic Programmers
Feed Title: Jared's Weblog
Feed URL: http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/index.rss
Feed Description: Jared's weblog.
The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers.
Twice in the last week I've been asked about the experience of writing a book for the Pragmatic Programmers. Since I've been meaning to blog on this topic for some time, I decided it must be time to actually sit down and do it. :)
This thread on Java Ranch is a good place to start. In part it says:
From what I've seen most of the authors either work mostly with Dave or Andy, not both. We worked with Andy for the most part. We've known Andy for years, he's local, and we've reviewed most of the books they've written.
Andy had a ~very~ heavy influence on the style of quality of the book. Will and I are developers, not writers, so our early drafts were kind of bad. Andy met with us on many occasions to retools sections of the book, writing tips, chapter direction, etc. We spent a lot of time in Carolina Cafe across the street from SAS over supper with free WiFi. We knew what we wanted to say but needed help in figuring out how to say it.
The book is ours and it represents our experience and ideas, but we got a lot of guidance and help from Andy on how present them. As you've said, there are some great books in the PragProg bookshelf already, and we had to meet that standard. I honestly don't think we would've made it without Andy's help. (Thanks Andy!)
When I compare some my current writing to the writing I did before the book and I just shudder. It's been a great experience for me.
Here's a bit from a new list I've just joined, the Agile Book Group:
Our day to day writing experience was very different from a normal writers (I'm
told). Dave and Andy built a really cool rendering system for the Pragmatic
Bookshelf. On a Linux or Mac box we can build the entire book to a PDF that's
largely press ready! It's even got cut lines on it. On a Windows box, we could
built to an HTML version, which was fine for day to day work. The entire book
was in an XML format, stored in CVS (and Subversion towards the end). It was
very cool to startup the laptop, do a "cvs checkout", then build a copy of the
book, edit for a while, then check in the changes.
How's that? Let me know if there are things you'd like to hear about.
Previous Topic
