I lost my job. That's how I started writing a book in November 2023.

At that time, I had a grim picture of what would happen to the startup I was working on. Working on a book while unemployed had its pros and cons. On one hand, I had a full working day to write it. It was better than trying to fit it in after a day's work when my mind was already exhausted. However, because I was thinking about the book all the time, I would quickly become tired of it and procrastination became a problem. The anxiety of not having a job also took a toll on my mental health. In my case, I signed a job offer a few days after being laid off, but switching my work visa took much longer than expected. I focused on writing most of it while waiting for permission to work.

Then I started working, and the book was forgotten for a whole year. The new position was demanding, and I had to learn a lot of new things (and had to use Terraform). Now, one year later, I'm back to writing it. I'm not unemployed again, no. But I did change jobs again. And because I joined a very early stage startup, I was able to use AWS CDK to apply all the patterns and best practices that I had previously written about.

In hindsight, it was great to take this “time off”; using Terraform for a while and then moving back to CDK highlighted the reasons why I love it. I have also reviewed all the chapters that I previously wrote, corrected any mistakes, discovered that I was wrong about certain things, and enhanced it with new knowledge. In this new job, I was able to implement everything that I describe in my book while creating a real product for a real business. And I'm writing exactly about that: creating infrastructure as code that is battle-tested and that actually works in real-life projects.

Now... Let's talk about what matters:

How is this book free? A PDF version is available on my website for download, free of charge.

I will also publish it on Amazon and Kindle. If you like my work and want to support it, you're more than welcome to purchase a hardcopy or the Kindle edition.

You can also be a patron with a one-off or recurring donation in the amount you think the book is worth. But no pressure, you don't need to pay anything.

If you are in Brazil, you can send me a PIX on [email protected] or clicking here