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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Liftweb book

I was recently contacted by PACKT Publishing to do a review on their book about lift web framework. The book present here is authored by Torsten Uhlmann and is intended for beginners. Since, I like to read technical books and have read many in the past including a few of the reference manuals, I decided to say yes and have a go at it.
This is what I plan to base my reviews upon.
  • It should be easily understandable for the beginners and must be useful for advanced users as quick reference. 
  • Must be more than the many available tutorials you find on the web about scala/lift technologies. 
  • Should not beat around the bush and get to the point quickly, which is develop a application using scala and liftweb. 
  • The most important thing would be, I should be able to build a simple yet useful application from end to end using the knowledge in the book and by expanding on it. I have not yet decided the application, but it will be something that I plan to showcase when my current projects - an application (not yet released) using nodejs/mongodb stack and a website for myself using jquery/html that indexes all my projects - are completed to a beta level release.
  • Last but not least, it should encourage the users to proceed with using Liftweb and learn more about the awesome framework and the unique design approach taken by that framework at more depth and by themselves.
The good news and the part that excites me is the book website claims to have the "Get the Job done" approach.
Btw, I believe that all technologies are awesome and have there specific usage. Point to note though is, I like liftweb framework and I am a strong proponent of the same and I have used it for real world production deployed application during my work at Sabre Holdings. But this has nothing and has no relation to the results of my review which is strictly about the book and not the liftweb in itself. I will probably take couple of weeks before I write the review as I am working hard at my work place and involved in two other projects that I mentioned above along with my other commitments.