Noel Rappin Writes Here

I really did want to get this done sooner, but I didn’t. See part one for the other books I liked in 2015. Consider this the books I really liked. You could call it a top ten, but there’s more than 10. But still, my absolute favorite books of 2015, alphabetically by title. Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie In trilogies, first books get to have all the fun. The first book is where you get the full thrill of discovery, of learning about a new thing.

Thanks to the literally one person who encouraged this list last year, I’m presenting the 2015 list of books I liked. Last year, I split between Fantasy Books I Liked and SF Books I Liked. This year, the split didn’t work out evenly, so I have “Books I Liked”, and “Books I Liked Even More”. Here’s the first batch: “Books I Liked in 2015”. First, the Books I Liked. Well, not all of them, but especially the ones I thought I could write an interesting paragraph about.

I will grant that I am very much not the market here, but if I’m being super nitpicky, there are five things I want from a writing tool for my technical writing: It is okay with proportional fonts. I don’t like my prose to look like code, which I realize is irrational. It should syntax color Markdown, including the backtick for code literals. It doesn’t go berserk when HTML or other symbols are inserted into the Markdown.

Welcome back This week I sort of broke ground on the book that will probably be called Master Space and Time with Ember. Here are some things I know or am reasonably sure about. It’s going to be pretty much a complete rewrite. I mean, some of the cranky rants might still be there, but all the technical content will be new. A new example application, too, though I’m still trying to figure out what that might be.

After last week’s Fantasy novels that made me happy, here’s part two. These are the Science Fiction books that I read in 2014 that made me happy. Again, alphabetical order by title. Also, I’m noticing that my writing-about-books skills are rusty, though I always found it hard to write anything decent about a novel without spoilers. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie This is the sequel to Ancillary Justice, which one all the awards last year.

Every year, I’m determined to write a post about my favorite books of the previous year. Every year, I fail at it, in part, because of my tendency to want to write a 2000 word essay on each one. This year, I’m doing it as part of my new “things that make me happy” blog posts. And I’m splitting it into two parts: fantasy novels this week, and SF novels next week.

Making me happy One of the things I want to do in 2015 is write more. This, like all New Year’s type resolutions, is invariably doomed, but we’ll take it as it comes. I also want to write more about things that aren’t programming, because, well, there are a lot of things that aren’t programming but are still interesting to write about. Combining these ideas, I’m going to try (and probably fail) to do a weeklyish “What’s making me happy this week” blog post based loosely on the similar feature at the end of the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast.

It’s book day! Rails 4 Test Prescriptions is available for Beta purchase today. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell random strangers on the street. I realize this is way more exiting for me than for you, but still… Here are some things that you might want to know: How do I buy it? Right now, the only place to buy the book is at the pragmatic website, http://pragprog.com/book/nrtest2/rails-4-test-prescriptions. You can buy it in electronic format, for $25 you get the current book and all future updates in ePub, Mobi (Kindle), and PDF formats.

A lot of Test Prescription book news got finalized last week. The title of the book is Rails 4 Test Prescriptions: Keeping Your Codebase Healthy. The publisher wanted the Rails version number in the name, and I want the publisher to be happy. The tentative on-sale date for the beta is June 11. For those of you who were around last time, the beta period is expected to be much shorter.

While the TDD Hangout was going on between DHH, Kent Beck, and Martin Fowler, I imagined a more exciting version on Twitter with #fakeTDDHangout [View the story "Fake TDD Hangout" on Storify]