“I can’t believe you’re using your blog to pimp you’re book! You’re such a … [not a nice word]”.
I couldn’t agree more, and overall the book is a mess and you shouldn’t buy it. If you do buy it, it will give you bad dreams (I know how to write dream trojans) and your brain could boil, increasing the size of your forehead until it eclipses the sun. Or maybe you’ll like it – who the hell knows – I gave up trying to figure this whole thing out a while ago.Why This Book SucksI’ll be straight with you – we tried to avoid sounding like every other book out there – so it might not work for you. Every chapter I wrote I actually stressed over – trying to make sure that I told a story and made it entertaining. I know I know – swimming upstream… but a guy can dream.
I hate boring books written by guys with huge foreheads and silly looks on their faces – and I have a lot of them (and now I am one of them!). One of the things I said to the editor when we first talked was “dude this book has to be fun and entertaining otherwise it’s a waste. Palermo’s already writing the boring one – we have to write the good one”.OK I didn’t really say that last part – I’d probably get in trouble if Jeffrey thought I said that – so let’s keep that between us KTHX!I wrote Chapter 9, the security chapter. Well to be precise – I rewrote it about 5 times. Each time I kept thinking “this is boring, who cares!” and that’s not a good thing – especially with regards to security. So I decided to tell stories along the way – stories about Kevin Mitnick, Kevin Poulsen, and The Ghettohackers pwning the competition at the annual DEF CON in Vegas. Stories about the Srizbi and Storm Worms (which I also wrote about on my blog) and basically tried to take a walk on the wrong side of the digital universe – taking you with me – showing you what kinds of bad guys are out there.Why This Book Really SucksScott H, Phil and I collaborated on a few of the chapters as well – and we each pushed each other to “speak a bit more plainly”. It’s easy to lapse into author-speak, losing your voice. This was a pretty fun process, and I have to say Scott’s an exceptional writer as well as a speaker. He wrote many of the early chapters in the book, and sums up the WebForms vs. MVC thing pretty well.He tells it straight, as do Phil and I – so if you like your books milky and Wonder-bread bland, well it’s probably not for you.What You Get With This Book (Which isn’t Much)People have been asking “what’s in this book anyway – why should I care?”. So here you go – I’ll tell you specifically:
- 0 to 60 with ScottGu and Nerddinner. Scott writes clean, amazing prose and cuts right to it, showing you how we started Nerddinner.com
- Perspective – Scott H. covers what MVC is in terms of a pattern and discusses the platforms that use it on the web today. He then dives in to “what ASP.NET MVC means” and exhaustively shows, in just about every way, the conceptual difference between WebForms and MVC
- Nuts and Bolts – Phil. The PM of the project himself covers Routes, Controllers, Views, and ActionFilters going into deep detail about each.
- “Higher Concept” stuff – Phil and myself. Phil puts on the rubber gloves and covers every possible aspect of TDD – how to work it with MVC, his secrets, and some interesting strategies you can use. I dive into Testable Design Patterns – the “OK fine so how do I put this altogether” kind of thing where I cover patterns and things I’ve learned from the Storefront. I also do a lengthy chapter on AJAX and show you some interesting tricks.
When You’re Done Reading It…Burn it. The ideas contained in this book are dangerous and might make you do weird things – things that could make people stare at you and say “why is he doing weird things”. Our hope is that you can dive into any chapter, and we don’t spend too much time on the basics but instead treat you like adults and try to get right to the good stuff – having a good time on the way.If you’re a sucker and have bought it already – well I hope it helps you somehow. If not, wel
