[ANN] Build it With Nitrogen Book Released

[Jesse Gumm]

Hello again Erlangers!

In my previous announcement this week about the release of Nitrogen 2.4, I
<s>ever so slightly</s> hinted at an upcoming book announcement. Well, here
it is:

"Build it With Nitrogen" (subtitle: "The Fast-Off-the-Block Erlang Web
Framework") has been released.

Authors: Lloyd R. Prentice and Jesse Gumm (hey, that's me!)

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Where to buy it
************************
* The Paperback can be bought from Amazon ($40):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982589247
* The eBook can be bought from Leanpub (recommended $24, minimum $12,
Erlang community discount at the end of this email):
https://leanpub.com/builditwithnitrogen
* We're planning on having an official landing page for the book up this
weekend.

************************
About the book
************************
Rusty Klophaus, Nitrogen's creator summarized it better than I could:

"This book is ambitious. It covers not only Nitrogen and Erlang, but also a
bit of OTP, databases, git, web design, and software engineering best
practices. And somehow, it does this well by building up from simple
concepts in a sort of 'Socratic dialogue'---if Socrates had a 'California
surfer' sense of humor."

By the end of the book, you will have learned:
* how to build basic CRUD interfaces
* how to build highly dynamic interfaces
* how to work with the templates and the DOM
* how to work with logins and password hashing
* how to use OTP basics with gen_servers and supervisors
* how to use the databases: ETS, Mnesia, and PostgreSQL
* interacting with external APIs (in our case, retrieving stock quotes)
* to build your own behaviours and use those to produce Nitrogen pages more
rapidly
* to build custom Nitrogen elements
* to convert those elements into plugin libraries
* the basics of web application security
* the basics of using other front-end frameworks (in our case, Bootstrap)
* to avoid (as best as possible) potential maintenance traps
* the basics of git (because I said so, that's why)

And we do this while trying to teach Erlang along the way.

My wife Jackie and I are big board game nerds, and when we're learning the
rules to a new game, she prefers to "learn while doing," rather than
getting a big rules dump right in the beginning. This book, were she a
programmer, would appeal to that sense. We lay out a few ground rules about
Erlang (variables, functions, atoms, and syntax), then jump right into
making things before the user knows things like iteration.

Our book is sitting at just around 600 pages, and there are probably
another 600 pages of material we'd like to write about, but time is a
thing. Maybe, just maybe a Volume 2 will happen. No promises, though.

But this initial 600 pages should be a good start, and I think it's a
pretty easy read. Especially if you like technical books with a more
conversational tone, maybe a few Midwestern U.S colloquialisms, and a
healthy smattering of "Dudes" and "Gnarlys."

************************
Discount!
************************
Finally, as a thank you to the Erlang and Nitrogen Communities, if you're
interested in a discounted ebook copy of "Build it with Nitrogen", please
shoot me an email at gumm@REDACTED and I'll get a coupon code to you.
Right now, we're making this offer to the community through the end of
2020. If you've already bought a copy (there have been a few of you already
- thanks!), and would like to receive the discount retroactively, shoot me
an email and we'll figure out a way to make it happen!

Thanks for reading, and happy hacking!

-Jesse

P.S. If you were one of the few who pre-ordered it, we're working on your
copies and will be getting them to you when we have them in hand.  I've
already reached out to you via email to confirm your shipping address.

-- 
Jesse Gumm
Owner, Sigma Star Systems
414.940.4866 || sigma-star.com || @jessegumm
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