I’ve written seven books. Not because I wanted to call myself an author — but because I had opinions about how we teach programming and use AI, and writing them down was the most honest way to test whether those opinions held up.
All seven are open source on GitHub, built with Quarto, and published as free KDP titles. Anyone can read them, fork them, or tell me where I’m wrong.
The AI Series
- Conversation, Not Delegation — The one I’m most opinionated about. AI isn’t a magic button you press and walk away from. It’s a thinking partner, and you get out what you put in. This book teaches intentional prompting as a methodology, not a trick.
- Partner, Don’t Police — Written for educators wrestling with generative AI in business courses. Practical strategies for integration rather than prohibition. Because banning AI from the classroom is like banning calculators — you can do it, but you’re not preparing anyone for reality.
The Python Series
- Think Python, Direct AI — A programming textbook that teaches Python and computational thinking with AI as a learning partner. Not “let AI write your code” — “let AI help you understand what your code does.”
- Code Python, Consult AI — Python fundamentals specifically framed around effective collaboration with AI coding assistants. The goal is fluency, not dependency.
- Ship Python, Orchestrate AI — The production side: testing, packaging, DevOps, documentation. How to go from “it works on my machine” to “it’s deployed and maintained.” The stuff that separates a script from a project.
The Web & Tools
- Build Web, Guide AI — Web development with AI assistance, covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, and React for business contexts. Practical, not theoretical.
- Book Forge — Not a book but a tool. A cross-platform desktop app that generates complete books using AI, with multi-provider support. Built in TypeScript and Electron. The tool I wished existed while writing the other six.
Why Open Source, Why Free
Because the point was never revenue. The point was putting ideas into the world and seeing if they survive contact with other people. Open source means anyone can challenge the content, suggest improvements, or adapt it for their own context. KDP means anyone can grab a copy without a paywall.
The 80-20 take: writing a book sounds like a massive undertaking. It is, if you’re aiming for a traditional publishing deal. But Quarto plus GitHub plus KDP means the distance between “I have an opinion” and “it’s published” is surprisingly short. The writing is the hard part. Everything else is infrastructure, and the infrastructure is essentially free.