Learning Vaadin is out

This is it! After 10 monts of work, my first book is out: 'Learning Vaadin' is now available at Packt and Amazon.

First things first, what’s is Vaadin? Vaadin is a presentation-layer web framework that let you easily develop Rich Internet Applications. It does so by provding an abstraction over the Servlet API and by letting developers assemble components to design screens (as opposed to pages as in previous generation web frameworks). If you got 5 minutes to spare, you can go try the tutorial and be convinced yourself. Note that I do not hold Vaadin for a golden hammer, but in most contexts, it just is the right tool.

Now, why write a book? An imperative prerequisite is to believe in the subject. For me, it was love at first sight…​ I already wrote on Vaadin and used it in real pre-sales demos. During a conversation with Joonas Lehtinen, Vaadin’s CEO, he mentioned he had been approached by Pack to write a book on the subject. My brain processed the information and mere minutes later, I proposed myself.

Although writing a book is like coding in a project in many ways: there’s a schedule, limited time, reviewing (testing), rewriting (bug fixing), ups and downs, it has not been easy for me. I’m admirative of people who regularly write books in their spare time. They need discipline, of course, but also a supportive family and the right publisher. Fortunately, I had these assets this time and I’m now proud to have finished the book.

But is it finished? The strangest is that I do not realize yet. I’m waiting to hold a hard-copy in my hands to really think 'I’ve done it'. Once received, I believe I will be entitled to some much-deserved R&R 🙂

'Learning Vaadin' in the news:

You’re welcome to mention other references I may have missed.