Chapter in 'Developing Backbone.js Applications'?

[addyosmani]

Hey team,

I've worked with the MarionetteJS and Thorax/Lumbar teams to write chapters on their solutions for the upcoming Backbone.js development book. We think this will help a lot of those intermediate devs looking to learn more about complex app development get their foot in the door.

I was wondering if anyone was interested in writing a similar style chapter for Aura. You would get a credit at the start of the chapter (which would also be in the physical version of the final book) and it could similarly help us get more developers familiar with Aura.

Some of what we used was based on their existing docs and probably took just spare time over 2-3 weeks to turn around. The format of the chapter tends to be:

• Explain what your solution offers
• Discuss why/how Backbone doesn't cater for these problems out of the box
• Take developers through your API/features through examples
• Todo/similar app tutorial using your solution (in our case could just be how to create/use two widgets)

We could probably scrap/re-use some of the Mediator/Facade section in favor of something like the above as Aura provides implementations for them that can be easily used.

In terms of deadlines, we're looking to wrap up the book for end of January so could wait on Aura's API finalizing. What do you think?

// cc @tony @sbellity @unity

If no one on the team feels they'll have time to write the chapter, I can start reaching out to members of the community but will leave this here as a starting point :)

[tony]

I've began a branch at https://github.com/tony/backbone-fundamentals/tree/aura-chapter.

Want to cover aura's implementation of Module, Mediator, Facade, Library Abstraction, etc. I will keep up to date with our code coming up to 1.0 / aura-express to make sure we're @sbellity's architectural updates make it.

[addyosmani]

Thats awesome @tony! :)

I really appreciate you taking this on (and I think a lot of it could be used in parallel for our docs). If you need any help with it at all, please feel free to let me know.

Also, if needed we can definitely re-use some text from the Mediator and Facade sections in:

http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/

[tony]

@addyosmani I agree we have a lot of writing / information from Essential JS Design patterns we can reuse in our new documentation. And it will great in respect to aura's new backbonejs chapter.

And to update in on this, README and @unity 's web efforts. I am beginning a new documentation effort in a fresh environment at https://github.com/tony/aura-docs (just for concentration / focus purposes) for now until we decide the best way to incorporate it.

I should have time tonight saturday to get a hunk of this in. I will post back here with updates on both fronts.

[addyosmani]

@tony sounds good to me! I'm happy to help review the docs efforts. Do let me know if anything in the JS patterns book requires further explanation for Aura.

[tony]

@addyosmani It has been a few weeks and I am still wrapping my brain around the new aurajs code in http://github.com/sbellity/aura-express#modularize. Documentation and examples could take another week or two for our official example and documentation.

Where does the deadline stand with this chapter? Seeing as aura's taking more time should it make it in? I'm open to giving this chapter or co-writing w/ someone else, @sbellity @unity.

[addyosmani]

So current status is we're going to start technical reviews of the current version next week. If we think we might be able to get a draft version of the chapter written within the next 3-4 weeks we could probably squeeze it in, but I'll let you decide if thats feasible @tony :) Don't want to put too much pressure on anyone. If we can't make it in this round, it can always be added as a chapter in the next edition.

[tony]

@addyosmani Sounds like a plan :)

et al, I'll keep everyone in the loop, branch switch should be ready to go when my README / aura-docs update is done. I'll let everyone check over my docs/readme before we do it. @sbellity sound good?

t

[sbellity]

sounds like a plan to me too @tony ;-)

[tony]

@addyosmani @sbellity et al. I'm not going to be able to dedicate enough time for a couple of weeks. Anyone feel like grabbing this.

[addyosmani]

I might be able to take this on once we have a little more documentation available for Aura. It might make sense for us to also take people through a walkthrough of the demo application (once its written) here as that can feed back to the docs.

[tony]

@sbellity went through the internals with me over the period of a few weeks. I'm still not resolute enough to document myself. He placed it in https://github.com/aurajs/aura/tree/master/notes.

@sbellity I think we need to deliver a concrete overview for our internals and basic usage for the team, we have a lot of it available in /notes we can piece together, the screencasts of the code you gave me were especially helpful 💃

[addyosmani]

Closing for now. We'll explore again sometime in the future.