Coding Faster v2 Being Considered
Sara Ford (https://saraford.net) and I had a long talk the other day and are considering a revision to the Coding Faster book (possibly even a title change). Here are some basic thoughts we are pretty sure we want in the update (if we decide to do it):
- Rip out all the summary info and just indicate version and SKU as appropriate. The summary info was my idea and it went over like a lead balloon so, instead of wasting that space, just rip it out and put info in the body of the content as needed.
- Rip out all but the most critical tips. We want to take just about everything out of the main body of work and put it in the appendix so that what remains is the absolute distilled top line tips. Sara and I both think there is just too darn much info and the top stuff gets lost in the noise. To be clear, ALL the info will still be there we are just moving it to the downloadable appendix instead of the main body of the book.
- Change the way we present the content. Instead the current approach which is just basically documenting the feature we will provide a solution statement about the feature. For example, “Make IntelliSense transparent” would become something like “Viewing code when IntelliSense is in the way” with the content changing as well to a problem-solution pattern.
- Only cover VS2010 and VS11. Since the previous book covered versions back to 2005 we feel we can focus on current and forward versions in this update.
- Include more info on Extensions in the appropriate locations. Since extensions have become a natural part of our Visual Studio lives it just seems to make sense that we include more info on the top most extensions to make life easier.
- Include new content on Ultimate and TFS features. I think we should have sections on things we have left out in the past like IntelliTrace, Dependency Graphs, agile features, etc…
So these are some of the things we discussed. If you have an opinion post it here or email me at zainnab@microsoft.com 