Preface

In college, after a horrible holiday experience working for a major clothing retailer, I swore I’d find a better summer job. Having been a camp counselor as a teenager, I found myself working at a tech camp. There I taught kids of all ages to make video games, build websites, and write code. It was rewarding to see how the kids entered a week of camp with little technical knowledge and left with a working project to show off.

Ever since, I’ve been passionate about teaching, mentoring, and sharing knowledge. I was lucky in my early career to work for a company that encouraged these skills. As an engineering leader, I now have the opportunity to mentor many software engineers.

Despite this desire to teach and share, I never set out to write a book. It seems, however, that writing blog posts and speaking at conferences naturally lead to other opportunities. Several months after speaking at Strange Loop, I was approached by Manning to see if I’d write a book on isomorphic app development. Here was a chance to take everything I’d learned as a maker of web apps and share it with others. This was the perfect opportunity to teach a much wider audience.