In his latest book, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” author Michael Pollan whittles his diet advice down to 7 pithy words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Inspired by the catchy phrase, Dwight Garner, New York Times literary blogger and reviewer, suggested that the “slogan’s haiku-like resonance, and 2-3-2 sequencing, lends itself to tweaking.” Some of Garner’s suggestions: “Drink wine. Rarely to excess. Unless necessary.” or “Be honest. Tell the truth. Then run.”

And in the same sloganeering spirit I offer my own Pollan-ish haiku–”Comment often. Watch book grow. Have fun”–to introduce our latest venture. Indeed, we’ve launched a new site for you, our readers, to comment early and often on a new book–Software Craftsmanship: Apprentice to Journeyman” by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye–while it’s being written.

Over the last several years, Dave and Adewale, both formerly of Thoughtworks, have cataloged 40 patterns of behavior that help software developers walk the long road to professional software craftsmanship. In their book in process, they focus on the trip from software apprentice to journeyman.

The newly announced book pilot site, a collaboration between Near-Time and O’Reilly Media, encourages reader participation through forums, commenting, and other interactive features. Reader feedback to all the chapters–including Craft over Art, Be the Worst, Draw Your Own Map, and Exposing Your Ignorance–and updates to the content will drive development before the book goes to print.

Surely some of this info in Chapter 4, Exposing Your Ignorance, could use some literate massaging:

Context: The people who are paying you to be a software developer are depending on you to know what you’re doing.

Problem: People need confidence that you can deliver, yet you are unfamiliar with the required technologies.

Solution: Show the people who are depending on you that delivering software is a learning process. Let them see you grow.

The need to appear competent is ingrained into the people of most industrialized societies. What’s more, these societies are increasingly dependent on your competency as software creeps ever-deeper into our everyday lives. Yet because of your inexperience you have many zones of ignorance. You are in a bind. The people around you are under tremendous pressure to deliver software: your manager, your client, your colleagues, not to mention, you. You can see this need for confidence in people’s eyes when they ask you how long feature X will take you to finish. There can be tremendous pressure to pacify these people, to reassure them that you know precisely what they want, how you’re going to give it to them, and when.

And we welcome your suggestions and feedback.

“O’Reilly has been on the forefront of collaborative development experiments for some time,” explains Allen Noren, O’Reilly’s director of online marketing and digital initiatives, in a press release about the new venture. “Those have required the cobbling together of multiple tools that don’t always work well together. What the Near-Time system does is integrate those tools–an authoring platform, blog, a forum, a robust permission system, as well as a for-pay and subscription gateway–in one integrated platform. I’m very interested to see how our readers respond to this.”

And so am I. We hope you check it out and let us know what you think.

Comment often. Watch book grow. Have fun.