Q2 - Tell me about the experience of writing Ship it!
Writing Ship It! was hard. Andy Hunt lives nearby and Will and I met him for lunch to pitch the idea. At the time I had a number of half- written articles on a Wiki that I was sure I could string together into a book in a month. Two months at the outside I told my wife. I think the book idea was the first one Dave and Andy accepted for the Pragmatic Publishing line (outside of their own books)... Mike Clark was right in there though. I'm not sure who actually signed papers first. But it took us a year and half to finish Ship It! My wife still reminds me that I thought I could finish it in a month.
The first problem we had is neither Will or myself had even written professionally before. We were developers. We thought we could write, but we couldn't. Andy invested a lot of time into us as not only an editor, but a writing coach. Being one of the first authors on the label has it's advantages. I doubt Andy would have time for authors like us today. But it paid off. Ship It! turned out very nicely and has been translated into Japanese, German, Korean, and even has an India sub-continent version.
The inspiration for the book is another nice story. I was having lunch with a friend and he was telling me about a project that was having problems. A short lunch stretched out well over an hour while I started scribbling out ideas on napkins for him. The topics ranged from the proper use of source code management to tracer bullet software development. Will and I had been lucky enough to work at two startups with very little process in place, so we (along with another developer named Jim Weiss) got to bring in the process. We had to gather (or generate) the ideas, sell them to the developers, then make them work. And this was the information I was sharing with my friend.
After lunch I dropped by Will's office and told him we had to write this stuff down. After a few brainstorming sessions we met with Andy, and the next year and half just sped by. :) Actually, there were times it sped by and times that an evening of writing felt like it took days.
The hardest part is not writing new material. The hardest part is going back over what you've written to tighten it up and make it worth reading. Rewriting so someone besides you understands the ideas, removing the 'extra' words, breaking up long passages with stories and humor. After you've rewritten and retooled a section a couple of dozen times, it starts to run together.
It was great experience though. When I look at what I write now and what I wrote then, I'm embarrassed by what I thought was good writing. I've a few books "in my head" for the next book. I just have to carve out the time to write them. It was a great experience and I plan to write more books.
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