The Book
17 Mar 2014
Authoring a technical book has been on my my bucket list for many years. During my days as a Java developer, I taught a number of casual classes and study groups and became a bit obsessed with reading every Java book available to understand what worked and what didn't. A consultant acquaintance who I discovered was also an author introduced me to Pearson / Addison-Wesley (a book publisher). While I continued to read the same books, now I provided technical reviews and was paid for it! I figured this was a good first step towards becoming an author myself.
After more reviews than I can count, life became busy — both at the office while working on the technology behind the Shazam app and at home with the introduction of my two children to the world. I ran out of time and stopped doing technical reviews. After a nearly 10 year hiatus, I started reviewing books again, but this time in the field of mobile development, and more specifically, iOS and Objective-C. After quite a few reviews of books by the renowned author, Erica Sadun, an opportunity to make my bucket list item a reality presented itself — to co-author a new edition of one of the best-selling iOS books with Erica.
This month, the results of many months of long days and nights comes to fruition. On March 19, The Core iOS Developer’s Cookbook (5th ed) will be available at stores (the electronic variant is already available). While I never could have imagined how much blood, sweat and tears was required (earning an even higher level of eternal respect for all authors), I'm very honored to have the opportunity, and can't wait to have my hands on the physical product of my (and many other's) labor. I hope that many will find benefit from this work.