I discovered the writing skills of Nicholas C Zakas shortly after beginning my very first development job. We were doing web interfaces using this newfangled Ajax technology, and I clearly had a lot of Javascript skills to pick up. So I bought a few books. I do not remember exactly how I came across it, but the first edition of Professional Javascript for web developers was the book which really hit the spot. For a long time it was The book I went to whenever I had a question or problem with Javascript. Often, the answer I was looking for was right in a section headline, the following paragraph laying out essential details with no word wasted.
Since then both Nicholas and I have moved along a great deal, but I have kept up with his blog as well as a good number of his books. Just before Christmas of 2013 I picked up his eminently slim e-book Principles of object-oriented programming in Javascript and discovered another gem of his Javascript writing. To the point, clear and detailed without ever getting lost on sidetracks.
Today, I was excited to find Nicholas' next book project starting. He is writing a book on Ecmascript 6, and he is going full Doctorow with distribution. The book is being written in Markdown, on Github and will be free to all. You will of course be enocuraged to pay for it - it will be available through Leanpub and probably others as well - and I definitely plan to pay. This is the way I want media to be distributed and shared, this is the way I want it to work and believe it can work. No artificial restrictions but paid for by those who enjoy and are able to pay.
Hats off again to Nicholas, I am looking forward to another great book and I hope it sells by the virtual boatload. (Torrentload? Download?)