I did it. My latest book is available: The Zen Programmer.

In early 2012 I wrote a blog post which went popular. I called it “The 10 Rules Of A Zen Programmer”.

I got a lot of e-mails regarding my text. Not all were nice. A few people were really angry about it. A guy working as some kind of manager wrote to me employees should simply obey. I still feel pity for him. Maybe he likes it that way and maybe I am wrong with feeling pity, but I do. For almost three years I only work with people I like. It is a positive and constructive atmosphere. No power plays.

A few of the responses to my blog post were unbelievable nice. A reader told me he printed out the 10 rules and put it on the wall behind his desk. I couldn’t believe that first. It is just a text but, I was so happy that it was useful to at least this one guy.

People asked me things on Zen programming. Suddenly I realized I would like to say more about this. I wrote the book with my own story. About how I understood Zen and how I apply it to my daily work. It is not a book which makes you a Zen master. I wrote it for your inspiration, and I hope it will be of use for some of you.

I tracked all my working time for The Zen Programmer with Time & Bill. I summed up my working time and found out it took me just 224 hours to write it. I thought it would be much more, maybe the double of it. But it was just 224 hours - it means I wrote almost 4 words a minute. It took me 20 months to work these 224 hours. In average I worked approximately 12 hours per month on the book. This is not much. Why did it take me so long to complete it?

Because I had to think about so many things. I didn’t track the “thinking”.

It was the most difficult text I ever wrote. When I completed the first chapter I was not writing for a few weeks. I had no plan and no idea. What should I write, and how? I re-read every mail I got. I tried to remember the questions when I started with Zen. I was slow, but after one year the book suddenly had a shape. Everything was easier.

I wrote the book in English because most of my readers speak English. I am not a native speaker, but English felt natural. The first version of my book was horrible to read. There were tons of grammar and spelling errors. I decided to work with an editor who helped me: Zach Low. If you buy the book, you can expect a book in well-written English. I am going to translate the book into my mother tongue German and PT Press is translating it into Chinese.

But that is future. At Halloween I couldn’t resist and hit the “publish” button. It was out. I was tired, but incredible happy. “The Zen Programmer” is an important book to me. It is not the end of my journey, but the beginning. If you like, join me.

I am selling The Zen Programmer in my own shop: shop.opensource.io and at Leanpub where it is featured on the front page as I write this.

There is no risk for you. You can have a refund in both shops when you don’t like it.

I would like to thank all the people who motivated me with their tweets and mails to write it. Without you I would not have completed it.