I'm several chapters through my book. Well, rough draft chapters that is--I suppose there's a subtle difference. ;) And I have a question that hopefully at least one person out there can provide feedback on.

As I am writing, I'm constantly battling with the whole “know your user” dillemma. This fundamental tenet applies to building products, designing APIs, and writing books, too. If my book is under or over the head of my target audience, well... folks likely won't read it! At this point, it's hard to pinpoint exactly who my readers will be. My envisioned persona at this point is an IT software professional who either has a couple years of experience or a CS degree. This person enjoys reading about technologies, but at the same time has a job to do and will be using the book as a crucial tool to enable them in doing it.

Seeing as I've never explicitly said what the book is, let me do that: roughly, it is a whirlwind tour of the CLR and .NET Framework, with a focus on 2.0 stuff. There are several similar works out there already, so I'm trying to differentiate myself with a more technical, geekish edge, and great coverage of the new 2.0 features.

So here comes my constant internal debate. How much computer science-ish stuff should it contain? I mean, there's a certain level needed to understand some concepts, but many could just as easily be glossed over. Moreover, if folks need to learn about hardcore CS stuff, well... there are plenty of classic texts out there already. Take type systems, for example. I could just say: hey, there are these things called types, of which there are two categories... value and reference types. The differences are X, and you use them by doing Y. And so on. Or, I could take a step back, and briefly discuss the design decisions made when choosing strong vs. latent typing, a good mixture of static and dynamic type checking, and so on. I could easily spend 1/5 of the entire Type System chapter on this alone. But I fear that could be a mistake.

I suppose there is a subtle difference... however, I do know that many people out there just want to “see the code” when they buy a book. Not read through a whole bunch of geeky expositions.

Any opinions would be awesome! Thanks...