Illustrations by Miran Lipovača. Foreword by Jacob Thornton
Published by No Starch Press
"If Hemingway Wrote Javascript is a strange and beautiful book."—Robin Sloan, author Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore and Sourdough
"Recently I had a dream in which I set homework assignments for Ernest Hemingway and twenty-four other literary luminaries. Each author received one of five tasks--common coding problems, mostly mathematical--which they were to solve using JavaScript.
To my astonishment, after a few days, completed assignments started arriving in my mailbox. Still more remarkable, with the exception of Kafka's accursed effort, they all seemed to work.
Naturally this was all too good to keep to myself so I've reproduced their solutions in this book. To help put the answers in context, I've written a short biography of each author, and followed their code with a brief explanation of what I think they were up to. As a respite between assignments I've included some poetic interludes: long forgotten odes documenting their author's struggle with everyone's favorite programming language.
Enjoy!"
"For that very special JavaScript developer in your life."—Ars Technica
"Probably my favorite book about programming. This year's for sure. Totally enthralled."—Steve Klabnik, author Rust for Rubyists, web celebrity
"Yes, If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript by @angustweets is cool"—Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript, co-founder of Mozilla
"All I Want for Christmas: If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript"—Adam Roberts, SitePoint
"Code, literature and art are beautifully represented in @angustweets' new book"—Jenn Schiffer, Glitch engineer, celebrity speaker, comedian
"I really, thoroughly enjoyed the book...Angus is hilarious, well-read, and a great writer."—Alex Sexton, engineer at Stripe, Modernizr core team, jQuery Board of Directors, Dojo Foundation Board
"Twenty-five famous authors, lots of JavaScript, lots of prose and poetry. What’s not to like? Put If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript on your shopping list"—SD Times
"If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript deftly explores the creative possibilities of programming through a series of inspired imaginary scenarios"—Kayley Thomas, PopMatters
"..a real treat, and a book whose time has come"—Rob Friesel, novelist and author of PhantomJS Cookbook
"...will surely delight programmers...an inventive work of fictional humor that takes coding to a whole new literate level."— Barry Silverstein, Foreword Reviews
"Sweet, edifying and laugh-out-loud funny."—Patrick Ewing, Twitter hall-of-famer, esteemed rubyist and coiner of "duck-punching"
"Bring some fun inspiration to the software developer in your life."—Monique Devoe, Managing Editor Embedded Software Design
"...you should have this book at hand at all times...so whenever you start feeling disheartened, unmotivated or simply bored with what you are doing...you'll look at it's chapters and remember that programming can be fun. That, beyond good and bad parts, beyond best practices and the professional fences with which we surround ourselves, those lego sets that we call programming languages, can and should be played with"—Javier Alba, JavaScript developer, voracious reader.
"Last night I read If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, twice, then pre-ordered a physical copy."—Rick Waldron, creator of Johnny-Five and JavaScript standards author
"This creative work should be in the hands of every student of literature, and every computer programmer"—Karen Leidy, Editor Freestone County Press
"I'm so excited by the "If Hemingway wrote JavaScript" book by the completely brilliant Angus Croll"–Robert Nyman, Mozilla Tech Evangelist, Editor of Mozilla Hacks
"...a fun, creative exercise that reminds programmers of the similarities between Javascript and natural language—and pushes them to be expressive and elegant in their own way"–Cool Hunting
"I have to admit that I enjoyed this book...some of the solutions are absolutely charming."—Marijn Haverbeke, author Eloquent JavaScript
"Best hypothetical question we've heard in a while"–The Millions
"Definitely a novelty that I will cherish"–Alex Young, DailyJS
"...a thought experiment, appealing to JavaScript and literary nerds alike"–Dan Shurley, Nomadic Press
"Looking forward to a tech book for the first time in a long time. [This] is going to be rad"–Brian LeRoux, creator Phone Gap