David Pallmann's Blog: Books

Programming Indigo - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:12:53 GMT

Now that Programming Indigo has been out for a few weeks, the feedback process has started. This is where people let you know, directly or indirectly, how much they like or dislike your book. Many readers aren't shy, especially when unhappy, so it doesn't take long to get a sense of how people feel from reviews, blogs, newsgroup postings, and direct mail. It's certainly an odd time for an author, with both praise and criticiscm coming in from all directions.

So what do people think? The reviews are mixed. Some people find the book really helpful. One person said they thought the book set the bar extremely high for future Indigo books. Other folks found the book so-so or downright disappointing. It's even possible to feel both ways! --since individual chapters can vary in focus and quality.

As an author you learn early on that it's not possible to please everybody no matter how hard you try. Still, I want the book to be as good as possible and even though it's already published, there's every opportunity to make it better by posting errata that list corrections, or posting articles that elaborate on or clarify points that are unclear. For errata I will make corrections through MS Press which will show up on the book web site. For elaboration articles I will use this blog. Of course, this process didn't help the first reader who found some errors and was angry that no corrections were yet posted, but now that we have some feedback we can begin to respond to it.

A few readers wish there was more "why" information in the book (for example, why would you choose the XmlFormatter over the XmlSerializer?) Some readers also wonder why some of the information is fairly dry, documenting properties without explaining their role or application (for example, the chapter on Bindings lists many, many binding properties but doesn't go into detail about how and when to use every one of them.) Lastly, some readers wonder why some topics in the book get a deep treatment while others are lightly touched upon (for example, security and management are lightly treated). All I can say is, I put as much why information and practical application in the book as I could obtain information about. In some cases, I felt it was helpful to at least document the existence of features and properties even if I couldn't go into detail about them--especially since the product documentation was not complete yet. When there wasn't enough information at hand for a deep treatment of a subject, I chose a lighter treatment, favoring accuracy over speculation.

Readers have every right to expect quality, accuracy, and completeness from a book they purchase. Please know that no one cut any corners in producing this book. It took a year to write, and during that time I worked nearly every night on it, 24 x 7, while holding down a demanding job at Microsoft. Writing a book about a product while it is in pre-beta form is a wild undertaking. The product design changed often during this time. Even as a member of the product team, it wasn't possible to get detailed information about every part of Indigo, which is a product with huge breadth. Some areas were further along than others, forcing some subjects to be treated less deeply than I would have liked. This isn't offered as some sort of excuse or defense; I'm just making the point that given the circumstances I think we did a good job on this book and worked to the best of our ability.

Programming Indigo now available

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:31:23 GMT

I'll be presenting on Indigo tonight at the L.A. .NET Developer Group along with fellow Neudesic principal consultants Mickey Williams and Chris Rolon, both of whom I have a great deal of respect for. I'll be showing quite a few Indigo demos along with the slides, mostly taken from my latest book, "Programming Indigo". I wanted to give away a book tonight but my copies from MS Press haven't arrived yet, so I took a stroll to a nearby Barnes & Noble bookstore in the hopes it had hit the shelves and sure enough, it was there and I was able to pick up a copy. It's always nice to see the final product after all the work and time that goes into writing and producing a book.

Of the 3 books I've written, this is certainly the most attractive: my first book was saddled with an orange cover and the second with a brown cover. MS Press books currently have a sharp-looking black cover styling with a tool theme (similar to how O'Reilly books have an animal theme). The Indigo book's tool is a riveter, so I guess you could say the book is "riveting".

What other Indigo resources are available? I'd suggest all of the following to the developer thirsty for mastering Indigo early on:

Indigo Beta 1 RC - available for download as the WinFX May CTP
Preliminary documentation included in Beta 1
WinFX May CTP SDK - contains samples
MSDN articles on Indigo
Various blogs by Indigo product team members (as I used to be) and Friends of Indigo (as I am now)
Scott Seely's online Indigo book-in-progress at www.thatindigobook.com
My book, Programming Indigo, published by Microsoft Press and available now

Programming Indigo: What it Covers

Tue, 10 May 2005 20:45:12 GMT

A few people have asked me what my upcoming Indigo book covers. I try to cover the full Indigo product from the standpoint of what an application developer needs to know to be effective. You could write a completely different book about internals and lower level programming, and probably someone will. My book is very task-oriented. Most chapters present conceptual material, followed by how-to information, followed by a programming exercise to drive it all home. This book covers Indigo beta 1 specifically.

Here's the topical organization:

1. Introducing Indigo
2. Fundamentals
3. The Programming Model
4. Addresses & Bindings
5. Contracts
6. Clients
7. Services
8. Security
9. Interop & Integration
10. Hosting
11. Management
12. Deployment & Troubleshooting
13. Case Study: business example
14. Case Study: peer-to-peer example
15. Case Study: real-time example