It's True. Don't Believe A Word Of It.

I'm often asked how I came to write for the Head First Series, specifically on their Python-related titles.

I'd been working with Perl for years and had written or co-written two Perl-related texts, and towards the mid-to-end of the 2000s had started working with Ruby quite a bit, no more so than as a result of all the (justified) hype surrounding Ruby on Rails. As a consequence, I'd read (and own) a lot of Ruby-related books.

Now, imagine my surprise when, one fine day, there I was sitting, re-reading some of the material in my well-worn copy of The Ruby Programming Language when - I kid you not - a big bolt of lightning shot out of the sky and buried itself in my beloved book. Take a look at the photographic evidence if you don't believe me.

I took this as a sign that my days of programming Ruby were numbered and that somebody, somewhere was trying to tell me something...

OK, I'll admit that some of that story is not totally true. Actually, the bit about the lightning isn't.

What actually happened was that it was my turn to cook dinner and, as Cooking for Geeks had yet to be written, I didn't yet understand how important it is to actually pay attention while cooking. You see, in one hand I had a pot which I popped on the stove-top to heat up. In the other hand, I had the Ruby book. When the pot got hot (or so I thought), I set the book down on the stove-top while I attended to the pot's contents.

It was then that I noticed a rather strange burning smell... then smoke... then (very nearly) fire. The Ruby book was smoking! Not paying attention, I'd switched on the wrong heat-ring on the stove-top and placed my book directly on top!

Needless to say, dinner was delayed that evening. But, I took this as a sign that my days of programming Ruby were numbered and that somebody, somewhere was trying to tell me something... and, anyway, the contract to co-write (with David Griffiths) Head First Programming (which uses Python) had just arrived.