This repository contains my non-fiction book called "Before Enlightenment, Fix the Build," in which I'm aiming to make spirituality accessible for software engineers. The canonical location for it is https://geekyfox.net/fix-the-build, so that's where you can read it.
This book is released under the CC0 public domain license. So, if you want to make your own thing on top of what I wrote, sure thing, go ahead and do whatever you want. Needless to say, I'll be glad to offer my opinion and generally hear back from you.
GitHub is not an obvious place to put a philosophy-ish / self-help-ish book, so let me explain.
Firstly, "Before Enlightenment, Fix the Build" is closer to what you can call a textbook than a blog. It's a series of essays that build up on each other, and it's written to be read in order, at least for the first time.
I considered using the likes of SubStack or Medium for this project, but then I realised that I'll have to put a "this is a chapter seventeen from an ongoing series, and you'd better start with chapter one" warning at the beginning of every post, which is lame. Well, that, or I'll have to rework those essays into stand-alone pieces, which means padding the text with build-ups and recaps that would annoy someone reading it as a textbook. Choices had to be made, and a textbook it is.
Secondly, it represents the fundamental impermanence of this text. It's not a prophecy, it's not a scripture, it's a notebook of a practitioner who learned a few things along the way and took the effort to write them down. If I learn something that clarifies or invalidates things I've written about before, I'll just push a new commit, and that's how it works here.
One day, I'll depart this plane of existence and move on to what's next. On that day, whichever version is the latest will become the final. Until then, it's all work in progress.
I hope you'll like it.
This book is primarily a solo project. If you want to add/remove/rewrite entire chapters, do it in your own fork. Oh, and please make it clear which thoughts are yours and which are mine, so people on the internet don't get confused.
That said, if you notice a typo, a broken link, or a sloppy line of reasoning, you're welcome to drop me a note at ivan.appel@gmail.com, or make an issue / a PR, you know the drill.