I recently finished writing Python Crash Course, an introductory programming book. The first half of the book is an introduction to Python, and the second half is a set of projects that build on what was presented in the first half. I found myself using Git differently as a writer than I do as a programmer. Having a decent understanding of Git made the process of writing a full-length technical book much more manageable.

I recently bought a house with a wood stove. The house is a fixer-upper, but the wood stove works wonderfully. It was the only thing that kept us warm the first two weeks after we moved in, after an electrical issue put our heat pump out of commission for a while. Chopping wood is a great respite from programming. It simplifies my world into one simple goal: chop this single piece of wood into two pieces. No matter how difficult or abstract my programming work has been, I get to live in a moment where just one single, concrete thing matters.

Recently I wanted to clean up the online resources for Python Crash Course. I’d been using a number of markdown files in the project’s repository, but for someone new to GitHub there’s a lot of visual clutter on a page like this. After setting up GitHub Pages, that page is much cleaner. I had never written a line of Ruby code in my life before doing this, so I learned a fair bit in the process.