I just finished writing my very first book! It is an introduction to the ClojureScript programming language that is primarily aimed at curious JavaScript developers. This has been several years in the making, and I am very proud to have finally produced a finished book!
The entire book is free online, and if you would like to contribute your thanks to the effort I have put in, you can pre-order a physical copy at https://gumroad.com/l/learn-cljs. I would love to know what you think about the book!
Top comments (14)
Congrats on the book. ClojureScript syntax looks very unappealing for me though. Not something I would ever try.
It takes a couple of days (max a month) to get used to the LISP syntax used by ClojureScript. That's not a good reason for not trying this beautiful language.
You’d be surprised. It’s actually really nice. You can create your own small blocks and resuse/build upon.... it’s good.
Thanks! I understand that it is not for everyone, but personally, I was really surprised how quickly I got past the syntax and even grew to appreciate it.
I really wish that other languages would enable hyphens in identifiers. Seeing things-like-this is so much nicer than thingsLikeThis or other things_like_that.
Very cool, congratulations!
I love Clojure but have not yet jumped into the ClojureScript side of things.
Did the scope of the book change much along the way when you wrote it or did your initial idea of what should be in the book remain throughout the process?
Where you able to have focus time on the book writing only, or put in some time here and there?
I am curious about the experience of writing the book since I have just started a book project myself.
Great questions! I originally started writing this book under a deal with a publishing company and got about halfway through the manuscript at that point. I ended up having to back out of that deal due to both personal circumstances and the requirement to re-work the format of the book so that it could go into a different series than I was originally writing for. I felt pretty burned out and dropped the project entirely for a couple of years. When I came back to finish the second half of the book, I had way less free time than when I had first started it, and it was a huge challenge to finish it up.
I would definitely recommend the process if you have blocks of time to dedicate to it! What is the book that you have started?
Thanks for the response!
I will be able to carve out some dedicated time soon, moving forward - so far it has been some droplets of time only, which has been a challenge.
My book is going to be about establishing ways of working for getting clean and structured cloud infrastructure usage, focused on AWS. The aim is to provide hands-on advice.
Congratulations for persevering Andrew. Not many people would have done so.
Your book really worked well for me! I have a bit of experience with Clojure, but I never really had a good handle on how to get off the ground with ClojureScript. I found the the structure of the chapters, with hands-on exercises made things really click. The print copy was on my coffee table for quite a while, today I just noticed that you signed it. Nice touch and thanks for your work on this book!
Just ordered earlier this morning.
Thank you so much! I appreciate the support!
How did you get such a nice cover photo if the print books are not available? Are they proof copies? Or is it just a computer-generated render?
This is just a rendering. I'm still waiting on a proof :)