Dec
5th
Wed
5th
3 things computer book authors should learn from the A-Team
When you were a child, you spent saturday afternoons watching the A-Team. Now you spend saturday afternoons racing to finish chapters for your heartless editor. But don’t worry, your childhood wasn’t completely wasted.
3 things that you can learn from those hours in front of the TV:
- Starting with history works best for the A-Team. “In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit…”: cool. “In 1640, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet, he can’t have imagined…”: not cool. Hard to tell why this is, but it’s a fact.
- Solving problems works great for both. The A-Team always starts with a problem that no-one else can help. Then Hannibal and co shows up and sorts it out. This works GREAT in computer books. What’s the problem this tool / book solves? Why can’t any other solution work? OK — let’s get to work.
- Building cool stuff is always fun. The best bit in the A-Team is always when, locked in a barn with a tractor, a bail of hay, and a discarded trashcan, BA puts together a worldclass weapon. The best bit of any computer book is the stuff that it teaches you to build.