Most readers of my ramblings are probably aware that I was one of the now abandoned Using Perl 6 book effort.
It was mostly abandoned because we had about 4 to 5 core authors, and interest and/or available time from most authors waned. I'm no exception here.
In December 2015 I've decided to write [https://deploybook.com/](a book on Continuous Delivery). It is now feature complete, and in the editorial phase. Since I didn't know if I'd make it, I consider this a success so far.
From writing the book, I've learned that designing the process the keep me motivated was very important. These were the things that kept me motivated:
- I limited the scope from the beginning, so I had the feeling I was making real progress towards the finished book. (And whenever I thought, "huh, maybe I should also talk about $related-topic", my mental response was "maybe in a follow-up book").
- I started the book as a commercially oriented project. Which mostly meant that I collected email addresses for a mailing list, and when I had the feeling I had something of value, I put it up on leanpub and started to sell copies. Having paying customers (and the metric of number of people on the mailing list) motivated me far more than people on #perl6 telling me they liked the book
- I had a cycle of blogging about a topic first, and later distilling it into a part of the manuscript. That helped me get around my imposter syndrome, because my standards for blog posts aren't as high as for book material. Writing the manuscript directly feels sooo much harder for me.
- I found an editor (thanks [ptc]!) who gave me good feedback. That also motivated me.
- The activities around the tooling (rendering the book through latex as PDF) were rather distracting. I just want to write my book in Markdown, and let somebody else worry about the rendering (leanpub or so at first, maybe a publisher later).
- I want to limit the scope too. So "Perl 6 OO in a Nutshell", rather than a full "Perl 6 in a Nutshell" (just an example; I'm not settled on that format).
- I want to keep the blog first approach, and use the blog to collect email addresses. I know some people frown upon that, but nobody has to give me their email address.
- I want to start selling copies on leanpub (or comparable platforms) very early. It hugely motivates me, and Open Sourcing can happen later, optionally.
Somebody who already has some experience with other programming languages.
I don't I can overcome the Curse of Knowledge in this area, and teach the very basics of programming successfully.
I'll likely be able to start writing around mid December 2016.
The actual topic and style of the book is very open right now. I could imagine a "Using Perl 6"-style book, which is example first, explanation later. Or "Perl 6 OO in a Nutshell". Or "Solving 10 problems in Perl 6". Or whatever.
What kind of Perl 6 book would you like to read, and pay for?
What kind of Perl 6 book would you co-author with me?
Which brings me to my last topic
I'd like to not do this alone. There are several reasons:
- Working together makes it easier to stay motivated
- I consider myself to be rather proficient in Perl 6, but I often feel my writing could be better. Having somebody to balanced these traits could be beneficial.
- Two authors == twice the fun!
Please let me know what you think, either as a comment here, or per email (moritz.lenz@gmail.com), or on IRC (nick moritz on freenode).
I would love a book on concurrency. I think the high level primitives Perl 6 offers are rather unique and potentially a huge drawing point for new users. jnthn's slide deck and the docs are a good intro, but more examples and in-depth explanation would be great.