
Meteor in Action - perlmonkey
http://www.meteorinaction.com
======
foldor
Hey, just thought I'd give my 2 cents in case you're interested. I was really
impressed with the landing page, and the buy it now while it's in development
method. I'm learning Meteor now, and I've been using Discover Meteor as my go-
to book resource, but I'm always interested in more.

However, I'm not sure the first chapter is going to be your main selling point
to end users. It's the introductory chapter, that goes over the history of
Meteor, and what Meteor is. That's not the chapter that will sell me on a new
book, I don't know yet how you intend to teach different programming concepts,
or how you introduce how to actually use the framework. It might be of more
interest to people if it was the second chapter maybe?

I'm interested, but not quite sold yet personally.

~~~
perlmonkey
We are absolutely interested in feedback like this, keep it coming!

Indeed the first chapter is tough - we learned that through various iterations
with many reviewers. Eventually we decided to just introduce you and skip the
meta talk about methods and stuff. That should be in the "Welcome" passage
before the actual chapter (included in chapter 1 - free download). If you
didn't find the argument to let you know whether or not the book is for you we
might have to refine this section and bring out our main points more.

Personally I am not convinced a starting chapter that told you how the book is
going to teach you things would help that much with deciding whether you'd be
comfortable with said book. It might be much more helpful to have a more
advanced chapter as a free read oftentimes.

Eventually Meteor in Action will be a printed book as well, so that
theoretically you will be able to browse through all chapters in a book store
of your choice. Always assuming they carry Manning book, of course :)

~~~
angrymouse
Personally worked on a few tech books (150+) and everyone wants to do an
introduction chapter but how many people buy a book without knowing the
history or Wikipedia level info of the tech?

Jump in faster I say.

Site is extremely well done. Is that something advocated by Manning or a
personal thing?

~~~
perlmonkey
Thanks for the compliments - it's a personal site, not officially run by
Manning.

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bellerocky
Once you read the book, the docs and have built something I recommend checking
out the source code too. It's very readable.

[https://github.com/meteor/meteor](https://github.com/meteor/meteor)

I've checked out the packages, the ddp, the binary json stuff, etc it's all in
there. Except for all the var self = this; stuff, I quite like it. They have
really smart people over there.

~~~
brbcoding
What would a better alternative be for `var self = this` ? I use it all the
time, never thought of it as an anti-pattern as long as it's only declared
where you actually need it.

~~~
jasonlotito
> What would a better alternative be for `var self = this` ?
    
    
        function foo(){};
        setTimeout(foo.bind(this),1000);
    
    

That being said, I'm not entirely crazy about that method as well.

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krmmalik
That's one of the most engaging landing pages I've ever seen for a book.
Sadly, once it went through to a sign-up wall for me to download the first
chapter free, I gave up. Had there been a direct download link, I would have
still been interested.

~~~
igl
It's meteor! Their marketing department want your email desperatly ;)

~~~
perlmonkey
Hahaha, have you seen their website? If there is one thing Meteor needs to
improve big time, it would be marketing!

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jakozaur
I'm glad to see growing Meteor ecosystem.

Judging from first few pages, looks like a decent book.

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petercooper
I'm intrigued by the picture on the front. I know Manning has a lot of covers
like this but I'm intrigued what this particular chap is/is doing?
Professional arm wrestler?

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corv
Manuel Schoebel has a strong presence in the Meteor community and many
insightful blog posts. I'm confident this book is going to deliver.

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joshowens
Great guys, can't wait to see a finished copy of this book! Seems like the
books are exploding lately, right before 1.0 is about to drop.

Good timing!

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imslavko
I have seen both Manuel and Stephan being very active in the community! They
also organize Meteor meetups in Germany, Cologne.

~~~
Amir_R
Yes, they are. I know both personally. They love Meteor and know how to
explain stuff in an easy and concise way.

We invited them over to our first Meteor Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany :)

[http://www.meetup.com/Meteor-Dusseldorf/](http://www.meetup.com/Meteor-
Dusseldorf/)

Can't wait to read their book!

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andylash
Meteor is a joy to work in

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enaros
nice guys! keep up the good work :)

