What tech topics do you think will (or should) be the focus of 2021?

@dimitarvp I had a proposal on low code/no code but it didn’t fly. I think the main objections to doing a book were that it would have to be platform-specific to be hands-on and would be out of date too quickly. I wish there was a way to overcome this objection because I think it is a up and coming topic that lots of people are interested in – perhaps even just for prototyping a product quickly.

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That is sadly a good objection because a number of these tools come and go these days, and those who stick around are usually quite old and not “sexy” in the eyes of the publishers.

As a programmer I completely agree – this is something that will gain more traction in the next years.

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I’m (re)reading Jeff Sutherland Scrum book at the moment. I’ve also just finished The Phoenix Project. Both books talk about how to manage a team and how to make them effective and productive. We just introduced Scrum at my current work, so I am extra interested in how it can help a team grow.

I think what I wanted was more great ideas on how to work efficiently and productively.


It could be fun to write a book on how to use Ruby 3.0’s Ractor framework to write a webserver. Maybe it’s too low-level?

Writing your own Rails aka Model/View/Controller structure could be great, but I don’t see the (book) value in doing so in Ruby 3 vs 2.

Because RBS and TypeProf are new for Ruby 3, they could also be interesting to use for a project.


For PWA I was mainly thinking about how to use it for building something from scratch. Usually it’s something you need to think into the foundation of your app, since it dictates how all data should be transferred or not transferred in the future.

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Thanks for the clarification. I will look for someone to write a C++ book. I have one author in mind – just don’t know if he has time to write.

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@ohm I think you are on to something by focusing on a book with an example project that plays to the new features in Ruby 3. Shoot me an email if it is something you are up to doing. We have short format books as little as 50 pages long.

For working more efficiently and productively in new Scrum teams, I’m going to ask @toddmiller and @RyanRipley what books they recommend. They are the authors of #book-fixing-your-scrum and have another book in the works (too soon to talk about).

For PWA, that gives me a starting point, though I don’t have any connections / people to ask to write on the topic.

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Hi @ohm! I’m actually tempted to recommend our book - Fixing Your Scrum. We spend a lot of time looking at real-world examples and provide quite a few tips, tricks, and tools that help teams align around their products and use Scrum effectively. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the recommendation, @RyanRipley.

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This thread :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes:

I’m so excited about the prospect of some of you becoming published authors!! :orange_heart:

I can definitely vouch for those mentioned above too, Margaret :blush:

@ohm ran one of the first Rails forums and when I found that I was too busy with the Elixir Forum, he kindly took over the running of the Ruby forum I was running at the time. He’s been a Ruby dev for quite a while so will have seen a lot of what’s been and gone, and what’s coming up - that angle will be quite beneficial for a Ruby 3 book imo.

Although I haven’t known @CinderellaMan anywhere nearly as long I’ve known Ohm, Kamil is a well-liked member of the Elixir community and you can see how popular his video series was here. There’s also quite a bit of interest in Cryptocurrencies right now (and I would definitely include a chapter or two explaining exactly what they are and all of the in/outs etc).

I wouldn’t bet against Ruby :smiley: Ruby is one of those languages that I think will be around for a very long time, and as we’ve seen with Ruby 3, it is getting better and better all the time. The Ruby community is also one of the most passionate I have ever known, and I am sure they will continue to refine and push Ruby over the years, even in the face of languages being created or backed by huge tech giants.

Have you thought about reading @chrispine’s book Margaret? I highly recommend it! I think after reading it, you may well become hooked! :nerd_face:

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Thanks @RyanRipley. I just bought it. Delivery in 5-6 days. :sweat_smile:

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Yes, I really should read Chris Pine’s book #book-learn-to-program-2nd-edition. I have poked around on the Ruby website and tried their browser-based tutorial at https://try.ruby-lang.org/, which is fun. It is just a matter of making time to go through it. I am a sailor, and spend a lot of my leisure time either on the water or fixing something on my boat. Right now it is troubleshooting the bilge pump. But I want to get to both Ruby and Python (eventually).

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That’s awesome @ohm! Can’t wait to hear what you think of the book.

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As has been mentioned in this thread, I believe other people like myself will also want to go back to the roots of computer science and gain a bit more formal training in math.

There’s a huge market up for grabs that sits in-between “math for kids or busy people” and “math for professors”. Math is usually dropped by people because of bad pedagogy, i.e. bad teachers or simply material that’s hard to explain well to not academically inclined people.

The whole Machine Learning / Deep Learning area is a good example. There’s a lot of stuff that can be written in a more accessible manner – tensor calculus would be at the top I suppose. Also Bayesian probabilities and programming (for product recommendations, “more like this” sections etc.).

Obviously I am not a marketing person and can’t precisely gauge markets. But it does seem that there are many people like myself who got tired of “get started with X in half an afternoon!” fluff blog pieces and would like a bit more scientific material related to their day work, arranged and presented better than in school.

IMO, a good food for thought.

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@dimitarvp do you think that the book by Mark C. Chu-Carroll Good Math #book-good-math needs to be updated with new topics to serve the purpose you are looking for? I’ve talked with him about some new book ideas, but updating his math book has not come up.

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I admit I kind of got some bad impressions from the intro – seems a bit too playful and cheery which is IMO not the best tone for a math book. But who knows, I might be getting old and grumpy. :smiley: I’ll review it in more details.

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Math should definitely be fun. Both taught and in writing. I know it’s suppose to be this hard and sharp tool that you can wield full of logic. The logic part of math is called… logic. That’s something completely different. Logic holds boolean arithmetic, truth tables, core reasoning (2+2=4), statistics, probability, but the rest of math is mostly fun.

Some YouTubers who made math fun:

https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtAIs1VCQrymlAnw3mGonhw
https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelPennMath
https://www.youtube.com/user/blackpenredpen
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOjTxz-u5zU0W38zMkQIFw

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Thanks a lot! I’ll review them (putting them in Watch Later right now).

As for math being inherently fun, for you and me it is because we derive fun out of solving problems. Fun is a subjective concept though and I’ve known a good number of people for whom fun meant watching TV 14 hours a day and drinking beer.

“Fun” in my comment above was more along the lines of: it seems like the author of the book doesn’t take the scientific material seriously and only gives you cursory knowledge. Hope I am wrong. I kind of need a complete math guide though, that’s why I am acting as grumpy as I do. :smiley:

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I agree :+1:

I definitely think we could do with more programmer-orientated maths books as well. In fact the more I think about books and learning material the more I think they should be split into three categories:

1 - Zero to Hero - where you end up with a very good understanding of the topic from knowing nothing or the very basics
2 - Intermediate - which builds upon the first and takes you to the next level
3 - Advanced - covering the the more advanced topics

I also think pricing could be adjusted for each too, since more people are more likely to buy 1, followed by 2, followed by 3 - 1 should be the cheapest, followed by 2 followed by 3. Not by much mind, just enough to offset the difference as the first 2 (as being enough for around 75% of people) would potentially sell quite a bit more than the third.

@ohm, maybe you could write a Maths for Programmers book :nerd_face:

If it starts at the beginning I’ll be your first customer :smiley: Maths was actually my strongest subject in school but I have just forgotten it all! Hence would love to start from scratch and particularly with material aimed at programmers.

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I am about to buy a Rust black hat hacking-like book for ~46 EUR lately.

I also paid about 100 EUR several months ago for a big book full of algorithms and data structures (at least 600 pages, hardcover).

It’s okay for the advanced material to be non-cheap. People who really want it will pay.

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That’s true, however I am firm believer that in this space (because it is pretty vast) the more affordable something is the more it will sell, perhaps even resulting in more profit (but the big win really, is that more people benefit) :nerd_face:

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There already exist a ton of math books for programmers.

One example is Donald Knuth’s Concrete Mathematics: Concrete Mathematics - Wikipedia

You should also be able to find a lot of discrete mathematics books which apply to computer science. There’s also graph theory and a lot of algorithms books.

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