This is my first newsletter since I enabled paid subscriptions. My number of subscribers has been going up faster than ever before and a few people even signed up for a monthly or annual subscription, so I figured now is the time to turn that on and see what happens.
If you signed up for the paid plan by mistake, please feel free to cancel at any time and I won’t be the least bit offended!
I have some ideas about a book that I’ve been wanting to write for 10+ years. The idea for this book first started when I was an editorial assistant at Software Development Magazine in San Francisco in the late 90s. One of my duties there was to read the books that were sent to the magazine for review. This was circa 1995, and there were a LOT of now classic books about programming that came out during the time I worked there. I got to take them all home and read them for free, and this is where my education about software development started. Eventually, I started serving as a judge for the Software Development Magazine Jolt Awards, which became the Dr. Dobbs Journal Jolt Awards.
Most books about computer programming are written by experts for experts and tend to be pretty dry and lacking in personality, humor, or plot.
There was one book that was nominated for an award during this time that sticks in my mind to this day, however. I can’t find the book anywhere, and I can’t even remember the title or the name of the author (please help if you know!). The book was about learning to program in the C programming language. It was written as a dialog between a teacher and a complete novice. The student asked questions and the teacher would respond. I think the book was based on an actual conversation between the author of the book and a non-programmer.
My takeaway from this particular book was that learning to be a better learner, teacher, writer, mentor, coach, employer, and so forth requires you to stay in touch with what it feels like to be a beginner. I’ve tried to keep that “beginner’s mind” approach in everything I do, but especially in my technical writing (which is why I love writing For Dummies books).
The aspect of this particular book that I liked so much was that it suggested that it’s possible to teach a technical subject to adults in way that involves storytelling — without it seeming contrived, condescending, simple, or hokey.
I think I know what I want to write about for my next book, but I haven’t quite figured out how to do it. This is why I’m enabling paid subscriptions now. If you pay the $5 per month, you can see and participate in the process. I’ll try making some videos for subscribers, I’ll certainly write more often, I’ll answer your questions about any topic (heck, or even about code you’re writing), and you’ll play a part in helping me write the book I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
If you don’t subscribe, I’ll continue to post public newsletters too, probably about as frequently as I’ve been doing it for the last few years.
Thank you for reading, and best wishes!
-Chris