All of a sudden it became book-writing season. It began in August when I started revising my second book, "Principles of Package Design". Apress had contacted me about adopting it, and they didn't want to change a lot about it. However, the book was from 2015 and although I had aimed for it to be "timeless", some parts needed an update. Furthermore, I had happily pressed the "Release" button back then, but it's the same as with software development: the code you wrote last year, you wouldn't approve of today.
Upgrades
Because Apress has their own pipeline for manuscript to book conversion, I had to take the original Leanpub-flavored Markdown manuscript, export it to HTML, then copy it into Mac Pages, and finally export it as a Word document. That was already a lot of work. Then I started reading the book and collected all the issues, creating post-its along the way. Having every little issue on display was a nice trick. It made progress visible, and made it feel like a project I could finish.
Re-reading my own book was a very interesting experience. I noticed how often I'd been lazy and skipped a proper argument for a piece of advice. I also noticed how some advice wasn't very clear and could easily be misinterpreted.
In that regard, it was very, very helpful to have Ross Tuck on board as a technical reviewer. He pointed out several issues where the reader, given this or that background, could have difficulty understanding a section, or take unintended advice from it. Ross put in a lot of time and effort, so from this place, thanks again!
Besides revising, I've also added several new sections, most notably about the following topics:
- The reuse of code from the Domain layer, with a discussion about Domain-Driven Design.
- Why "final" classes should be preferred, and how composing objects should be the preferred way of changing the behavior of existing objects.
- When to introduce an interface for a (packaged) class.
Because there are many people who have read the first edition, who I don't want to "force" to buy the second edition as well, I've already published several articles that cover more or less the same ground:
Without further ado
So, here we are. The release of the second edition of Principles of Package Design! The book is available on Apress,com and Amazon, but it's also a "regular" book, so your book store should be able to order it as well.
Buy the e-book or soft cover via Apress
Buy the e-book or soft cover via Amazon
Do you want to review the book?
I'm very curious about your opinion. If you've read the book (first or second edition), please let me know what you think of it. It would be great if you could submit a customer review on Amazon.
If you'd be interested in writing a review on your website, blog, etc., send me an email at info@matthiasnoback.nl, so I can send you a review copy.
Also, if you see this book in a store somewhere, it'd be very cool if you could send me a picture!