First Draft: Check ✅

The first draft of Conjuring Code (the book) is done! It's now in the hands of early beta readers.

I’m excited to share that I’ve reached a fun milestone: the first draft of Conjuring Code (the book) is done! It’s now in the hands of a handful of early beta readers (thank you, if that’s you!). There’s still a looooong way to go before it reaches its final form (including probably making it about half as long, and figuring out who my awesome publisher will be). But the first notch is now in the belt, and it was (pardon my French) a crap-ton of work.

More than a few people have asked me, “Bro, why are you writing a book about this? Why not just smaller things like articles and podcast episodes?”

I get the question; writing a book is not a hip choice these days. By comparison to micro-format things like posts and threads, books seem so ... big. Difficult. Monolithic.

Plus, who has the attention span to even read a whole book these days?!

Well, as counter-cultural as it is, this feels like the right thing. Anybody can make software now, and I want more people to experience the fun of that. But even with AI to get you past the technical hurdles, for a lot of people, it’s still too much, too unfamiliar and scary. So helping people cross that chasm—that’s the spirit of the book, to be your friendly guide through the whole landscape, even if you only need a little bit of it right now.

Of course, I will also be doing all those other things—blogs, podcasts, articles, talks, etc. Now that I’ve got this draft, I am ready to start unleashing all the other kinds of content. I just needed to put all the pieces together in my mind first, in one cohesive frame.

I’d never created anything book-length before, and boy howdy is that a learning experience. But I’m proud of how far it’s come and I think you’re going to love it.

You can check out the current Table of Contents right here, and if you’re interested in being a beta reader in the next round (May 2026), let me know.