 Programming on the Internet, in Internet time, is a collaboration. There are a million sites out there to find out how to write a little snippet of code. Go to Google and search for C# Custom Cursor, and up come 7,000 web sites to tell you how to change the appearance of the mouse pointer in C# for .NET. So you don't need me, do you smart guy? It works once you know what you're doing. It'd be a rough ride learning that way. You came here. You wanted something. You felt it your whole life. That tech books could be something more. The garage is a place to go to be alone. To be with your friends . It's an accessory . It's a style, a way of life, it's a friend, it's a companion, it's an IRC server, it's what a book would be if a book could be a wiki with exactly what you need and nothing you don't. And no banner ads. Says the Oracle: "How could our jobs be so fantastic, so filled with art and innovation and dripping with collaboration and speed and the thrill of making it work ”and yet our books be so dull and dusty and cardboard and boring and in a format that's essentially unchanged for more than 35 years ?" You came here to learn what you need to know about Java until everything turns green. So let the garage be green. Our work and our play are so interweaved they are indistinguishable. This is how we think now. There is no such thing as the weekend . Luckily for us, our work is fun. It is an absolute delight. IT is like Wonka's factory for smart people. Can our books be that? Force the boring writers to listen to Yoko Ono nonstop until they relent in their boringness. And the garage god said, "Make It So." In the garage you do your projects. On your time. So our garage has a toolkit, which means you got a load of code to work with, and it's well documented so you understand why it works the way it does. Cuz that helps you remember it next time. And there are FAQs to look up quick deals that you need to use in your daily job. And a glossary on steriods that doesn't just point to a pointer of a pointer of a pointer, but tells you the whole definition, and gives you a context. Working in IT happens with windows open and processes running and the ftp here and the zone file there and the Photoshop and your IDE all open and going and getting it done. Show me the Java programmer who doesn't need to know anything about html and networks and naming and sql and xml and administration and uml. A book about Java isn't written for any human; it's written to be Da Word. I reject the word. That's not how I work, or how anyone I've ever met in IT works. We are situated in a context with a lot of technologies that work together. Perhaps our books can be like this? And thus the Architect wrote it. Garages are all different. I live in the hot and hollow, barenaked desert of the American southwest. Sometimes scorpions find their way into my garage. And rattlers sometimes, and thick brown spiders. Another garage will be different. Because it is different, each garage has a blog, where the writer goes to rant. This keeps everybody honestpuck. It makes sure there is a human voice. Selling something isn't allowed. We're just going to talk for a while. And at the end of the conversation, you'll see green. Cuz in a garage, you bang it around until it works. So each garage has real, working code, and instructions like recipes for making usable, neatokeen applications that you can incorporate into your own projects. Cuz that's the point. Too bad how lotsa programmer book guys eject from the cockpit at the very last second, leaving the real work as "an exercise for the reader." In the garage, we don't get much of that kind of "exercise." Maybe just lifting a beer once or twice. When Willy Wonka is your role model, you should be able to eat everything. Lick the pages. They taste like schnozberrys . The Garage is where you go on Saturday. You hack it out when you get a second. So none of this long claptrap with 5,000 pages, and I'm breaking my wrist carrying that sheet to work, and all I need is for my wrist to get jiggy with the exchange server come 5 p.m., if you know what I'm sayin'. Short, focused, recipe deals that give you the how and the why. Uh, I guess we won't be doing nothing like, "The All-Time History of Programming blah blah and then dude invented fire and then blah blah and then came Linux." How about instead, "Retrieving User Input from the Console." Then, boom. How to do it. Why it works. How to integrate it. Done. The garage is a place. I don't know where you're from, but my garage don't really go in a straight line. It's more like I hang out there til the game comes on. Now. This is our Java Garage. The keymaker says, "That door will take you home ". | 