Re:My own experiences writing a tech book (Score 1)

Finally, using a continuing example throughout the book might be nice for readers, to give them a continuing context, but it greatly increases the risk of a lot of rework on your part if you change your mind about something halfway through writing.

Oh, dear god, I hate that. As a reader of technical books, there's nothing more frustrating than turning to the section I need only to discover that I have to understand the example threaded throughout the preceding ten chapters to begin to understand the topic material. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't often read a technical book begining to end. I might just pick out the good parts (ie. the stuff I don't know already), or maybe I read the book over a few months or even a year.

To the authors of all the awesome books I've read, I'm sorry, but I just don't have the time or need to read your book (no matter how awesome) from cover to cover. Please, please, use small, pointed examples that expose the topic at hand.

Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I really don't want to understand somebody else's project just to learn the framework or language or whatever that I want to apply to my own.