Introduction to JVM Languages book (Packt, 2017)
I had a small blog called "JVM Fanboy" for a little while. I covered all kinds of programming languages on it, from Java, to some other popular languages, like Groovy, to some more obscure programming languages (Golo language, anyone?) that ran on the Java Virtual Machine.
One day, an employee of the Indian/UK publisher Packt Publishing contacted me and asked me if I was interested in writing a full book on this topic.
I had no idea what I was getting into, when I answered "Yes", but about a year later, this 450-paged book appeared on the market:
About the experience of writing a full book, I can say it was stressful and it took too many long nights to finish it on time. As a no-name author, you either follow the rules/deadlines set by the publisher, or give up. I'm quite proud I made it to the finish line.
One of the cool developments that happened, is that Packt decided to make two training videos based on my book. I got some nice feedback from people that followed the videos.
Publisher's links
Here are the links to the publisher's site:
- Book (Published June 2017, 450 pages, ISBN 9781787127944)
- Training video #1: JVM, Java, Scala (Retired as of 2022)
- Training video #2: Clojure, Kotlin and Groovy (Retired as of 2022)
The training videos have been officially retired and are no longer available from the publisher. Some of the framewords covered in the book have changed quite a bit and the example code no longer works. That was especially problematic for the step-by-step videos.
Java itself was also enhanced significantly since the book was printed. All this would require a major rewrite. I would be interesting in doing that, if the landscape around alternative languages on the JVM changed a bit more than it has done (in my view no new exciting promising languages have appeared, or ground-breaking changes to existing alternative languages happened since the book was written).
Translations
The book was officially translated in at least two languages.
I found those copies on Amazon and had to contact my publisher to ask if they were the real deal, which they confirmed.
Maybe one day I'd try my hand at a new book. I was asked several times if I was interested to talk about a new title, by two publishers. I decided that if I'd try it again, it would be on a topic that I came up with myself. My current contract with my employer also forbids me from writing commercially, so for the time being I don't expect it to happen on the short term.