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Hey folks - Jason from thoughtbot here. We're aiming for a very collaborative format here, giving collab access on GitHub as we write the book using Scott Chac

by jayunit 15y ago

Hey folks - Jason from thoughtbot here. We're aiming for a very collaborative format here, giving collab access on GitHub as we write the book using Scott Chacon's git-scribe [1]. I'm hoping to solicit feedback as we go, and make the book content the best it can be. What do you think of this approach? 1: https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe

Omnipresent 15y ago
It would be good if the book involved a problem or app that is well suited for backbone and the book/code works on that app until the completion
- jayunit 15y ago
  Yep, we're big believers in hands-on learning and delivering code with this book is a big part of that. I'm not 100% on the idea of one app for all the chapters. For books we've written and workshops we've delivered in the past, this has actually been more trouble than it's worth, and we ended up adding superfluous content in order to build a cohesive app. We're aiming to have a code base delivered with the app where examples live, but the examples might not always cohere - we'd rather each example best illustrate its content.
- pabloIMO 15y ago
  I agree with this up to a point. Probably the best programming book I ever worked through was Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It was great to learn a full workflow start to finish. While I don't necessarily have to take the concept as far as Hartl did for it to work, I would suggest that the code relating to every concept/portion of the book is capable of doing something in and of itself, regardless of how small. Actually the Hello Backbone.js tutorial is a good example of this. http://arturadib.com/hello-backbonejs/ http://arturadib.com/hello-backbonejs/ Every page works on it's own and build on the code from the page before.
beck5 15y ago
I love the gid-scribe idea, I am learning backbone atm and one of the problems is the changes in 0.5.0 seem to put lots of old resources out of whack by a few degrees. I think resources should be paid for (I just bought the peepcode videos from a comment here) I would be mildly worried that $49 might be a little high for some, but then again I hope I am wrong. Previews are always nice to see, the first couple of chapters to get a feel.
- jayunit 15y ago
  Thanks! (And agreed on the 0.5.0 changes, just went through the upgrade on an app ourselves a few days ago.) Definitely hear you (and others) on the previews - we agree they'll be good to have.
- nikcub 15y ago
  I really wish they would fire deprecation warnings when they rename methods and objects, rather than just letting it fail with a 'not found' error - which could mean anything
nwjsmith 15y ago
I love the idea of the book being on Github (pull requests seem particularly suited). Are you going to have easily-downloadable drafts of the book though? or will I have to compile it?
- jayunit 15y ago
  We're figuring out the best way to distribute, but with git-scribe and our workflow, we can cut frequent releases to all the git-scribe output formats that will be available through the repo - we definitely don't require you to install git-scribe or the publication toolchain. Sound like it'll work out?
lyime 15y ago
Can't seem to complete the purchase. Wufoo keeps telling me -- Credit Card * The transaction has been declined because of an AVS mismatch. The address provided does not match billing address of cardholder. --
- ubuwaits 15y ago
  If you're still having trouble, please email us at workshops@thoughtbot.com and we'll help you out. Thanks!

by jayunit 15y ago

Omnipresent 15y ago

It would be good if the book involved a problem or app that is well suited for backbone and the book/code works on that app until the completion

jayunit 15y ago
Yep, we're big believers in hands-on learning and delivering code with this book is a big part of that. I'm not 100% on the idea of one app for all the chapters. For books we've written and workshops we've delivered in the past, this has actually been more trouble than it's worth, and we ended up adding superfluous content in order to build a cohesive app. We're aiming to have a code base delivered with the app where examples live, but the examples might not always cohere - we'd rather each example best illustrate its content.
pabloIMO 15y ago
I agree with this up to a point. Probably the best programming book I ever worked through was Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It was great to learn a full workflow start to finish. While I don't necessarily have to take the concept as far as Hartl did for it to work, I would suggest that the code relating to every concept/portion of the book is capable of doing something in and of itself, regardless of how small. Actually the Hello Backbone.js tutorial is a good example of this. http://arturadib.com/hello-backbonejs/ http://arturadib.com/hello-backbonejs/ Every page works on it's own and build on the code from the page before.

beck5 15y ago

I love the gid-scribe idea, I am learning backbone atm and one of the problems is the changes in 0.5.0 seem to put lots of old resources out of whack by a few degrees. I think resources should be paid for (I just bought the peepcode videos from a comment here) I would be mildly worried that $49 might be a little high for some, but then again I hope I am wrong. Previews are always nice to see, the first couple of chapters to get a feel.

jayunit 15y ago
Thanks! (And agreed on the 0.5.0 changes, just went through the upgrade on an app ourselves a few days ago.) Definitely hear you (and others) on the previews - we agree they'll be good to have.
nikcub 15y ago
I really wish they would fire deprecation warnings when they rename methods and objects, rather than just letting it fail with a 'not found' error - which could mean anything

nwjsmith 15y ago

I love the idea of the book being on Github (pull requests seem particularly suited). Are you going to have easily-downloadable drafts of the book though? or will I have to compile it?

jayunit 15y ago
We're figuring out the best way to distribute, but with git-scribe and our workflow, we can cut frequent releases to all the git-scribe output formats that will be available through the repo - we definitely don't require you to install git-scribe or the publication toolchain. Sound like it'll work out?

lyime 15y ago

Can't seem to complete the purchase. Wufoo keeps telling me -- Credit Card * The transaction has been declined because of an AVS mismatch. The address provided does not match billing address of cardholder. --

ubuwaits 15y ago
If you're still having trouble, please email us at workshops@thoughtbot.com and we'll help you out. Thanks!