I just spent some time at Bart de Smet's online blog and found it to be not only useful information for developers but at the same time interesting, fun, reading. The author obviously not only knows his subject matter, but has a talent for making his writing enjoyable to read:
...80 centimeters behind me lies the answer in dead tree format. I reach out to my bookshelve. A blue book, purchased 08/03/03 in Ghent according to a sticker on the back, is removed from its spot where it's been sitting since its overseas transportation almost two years ago. Not too dusty though. The title is still clearly readable: Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Protocols and Services. Yes, I admit. I even posess books on IIS 6.0, Exchange 2003, Active Directory Services and PKI in Windows Server 2003...
What am I looking for anyway? Oh yes, huge number of connections in CLOSEWAIT state. Luckily, the Book Browser service declared a dependency on the Indexer service. It's consulted to load pages in the upper range of the dead tree volume, triggering a search algorithm for LCID 1033, and responds to the "CLOSEWAIT" query with an offset 329...
Another good example of this type of writing is the classic Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing which was 90s book on how to set up a web server but had a very subjective and informative writing style which kept you reading it like a novel as you learned different strategies for connecting a database to HTTP/HTML. The book was also choc full of random color pictures he had taken on his journeys around the world which made it one-of-a-kind.
I want to find more writing of this genre: e.g. writing that takes WPF and ASP.NET MVC and makes it juicy and fun and connects it to a wider range of knowledge/experience, writing which teaches you MVVM but also dabbles in philosophy and draws parallels between object-oriented patterns and Greek thought or Aristotle's drive to organize the world in a hierarchy, etc.
Who are the best developer/authors out there who are going beyond mere transmission of information, authors who combine their knowledge of IT and their writing talent to produce enjoyable literature that is useful to developers at a technical level?