Reviewing "Learn React with TypeScript 3"

Have you ever been contacted to review a new book for a publisher but unsure about what it would involve and what you would get out of it? At the end of last year I had the opportunity to Review a new book for Packt Publishing, "Learn React with TypeScript 3" written by Carl Rippon. Here is a brief account of my experience.

A bit of a background

Packt Publishing had contacted me earlier in the year to write a book on React and TypeScript but I have never written a book before and the thought of doing so was quite daunting. My time pressures of running a start-up dev team as well as being part-way through a house extension meant that I decided to revisit the idea at a later date.

It was with real excitement that I was able to review this book (written by Carl) as it gave me the opportunity to see part of the process. I got the contracts signed and was off on this discovery.

Going through the chapters

I was initially sent a few chapters to review and comment on. It was pretty methodical and time-consuming work as I read each paragraph, completed all the exercises to make sure that they worked and then fed back on my experiences.

They wanted feedback on a number of aspects, from purely practical spelling and grammatical issues to my opinion on how the content would be received. They also wanted any thoughts or ideas on how the content might be improved.

There was a lot of time-pressure to get through as much as I could so that they could meet the publishing deadline. It took a few hours to get through each chapter and complete the review at the end. It meant that I needed to dedicate a few hours most nights after work to go through the chapters that had been given to me.

Published and out in the wild

It was a bit of a rush at the end to put together a short bio to go in the book. It took me a few drafts, not knowing exactly how to keep it short but helpful.

Then finally, it was published, out in the wild. I'd like to congratulate Carl on all he has achieved. I have passed on my copy of the book to one of the developers on my team who has found it very helpful. The book will appeal to anyone who has worked with JavaScript before but not done very much with React or TypeScript. It doesn't assume very much–which is great–and so does a good job at taking you through the different technologies and practices you need to build a React application with TypeScript.