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Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers
- Feuilles_Mortes 10y agoLove this idea :). I would suggest making submitting a book easier through an online form, though. The process of forking, editing a raw JSON file, and submitting a pull request seems a little primitive, and has a high cost to those who want to contribute. Thank you for your time and energy making this resource!
- throwaway1892 10y agoPerhaps the barrier to contribution aims to act as a filter against poor/troll contributions. Also the necessary skills to submit a book overlap a lot with the skills of the people who might be interested.
- Feuilles_Mortes 10y agoThis is a fair point, and one that I hadn't considered.
- ainiriand 10y agoReally interesting to reflect on the fact that a lower barrier of entry is not always equal to a better choice. There could be a lot of philosophy around this subject, leading us to: should voting be constrained by technology or knowledge of some sort? Is the action motivated by knowledge better to the uninformed one? Sorry for all this off-topic but it is kinda related. I would really love to hear your opinions on this, thanks.
- DocTomoe 10y agoI would love the Ballot having a second row with ten multiple-choice questions about politics, the economy and the world. Vote gets multiplied with the number of correct answers. Everyone wins.
- shard 10y agoInteresting, but choosing unbiased questions will be a ballet in itself.. Edit: A ballot in itself, although a ballet in itself also works...
- Feuilles_Mortes 10y agoI think this is a really bad/scary idea. A great thing about democracy is that _everyone_ has a voice. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. In school we were taught a great deal of the Civil Rights movement, as much of it happened in our city and state. In particular, this "test" suggestion makes me recall the literacy tests [1] instituted in the Jim Crow south. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
- burkaman 10y agoNo. If unreasonable limits are put on voting, people will find other, more destructive ways to "vote". Every government is eventually a democracy, in the sense that if you rule against your citizens' wishes for long enough and they aren't allowed to vote, they will try to kill you or overthrow you. It just isn't very practical to rule without the consent of the governed. > Is the action motivated by knowledge better to the uninformed one? Well yes, obviously, but it's better to try to force people to be informed than to ignore them. As you may have noticed, people don't like being ignored.
- ainiriand 10y agoAnd what would happen if the ones in power are the first interested in having misinformed population so achieving power is easier for them in the end?
- throwaway1892 10y agoAdding any kind of discrimination to an election process (which is a right and has to be open to all) is not a good idea, since it opens the way to all sort of abuse (see the comment on literacy tests), in the way it is evaluated. I don't see a way for such a test to exist, without any bias that could create discrimination. And even if people are informed, it does not mean they would chose according to that knowledge, since I think a lot of people vote not according to their brain, but follow their emotions or the expectations of their social group.
- caiozo 10y agoFor while, to submit a book must be via GithubPR, but I will work to add a simple google form, to moderate all books in the future.
- bklaasen 10y agoThis is how pyvideo[1] accepts submissions[2] too! [1] http://pyvideo.org/ http://pyvideo.org/ [2] https://github.com/pyvideo/pyvideo/wiki/How-to-Contribute-Media https://github.com/pyvideo/pyvideo/wiki/How-to-Contribute-Me...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bimmer44 10y agoThis is a useful resource - thanks for compiling it. I'd suggest allowing users to submit short reviews of each ebook. I'd imagine it would be useful to have some insight as to which book would be most helpful for different circumstances - especially once you start to get some more submissions and there are more books per category.
- Jugurtha 10y agoSimilar to this http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subject/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj... From the link, here's a quote: >There have been other pages of recommended reading on Less Wrong before (and elsewhere), but this post is unique. Here are the rules: - Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject. - You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject. - You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.
- ainiriand 10y agoCould be great to add 'Share by email', with the book directly attached.
- caiozo 10y agoCool idea! I will look for a snippet code to add the email share, thanks!
- Artoemius 10y agoGreat resource! I hope it grows to be a huge collection indeed. Also I hope it'll manage to avoid all the potential legal problems when people (knowingly or unknowingly) start submitting books that are not actually freeware.
- caiozo 10y agoThat's the idea! Grow the list only with free books (piracy won't be accepted).
- Wheaties466 10y agolooks like getting started with django isn't a thing anymore
- caiozo 10y agoThis link was fixed minutes ago! Thanks for the report!
- Wheaties466 10y agohttp://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/en/lessons/introduction-and-launch/?utm_source=devfreebooks&utm_medium=medium&utm_campaign=DevFreeBooks http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/en/lessons/introduction-... doesn't appear to resolve.
- darfs 10y agoI found in a quick google search: https://tfetimes.com/free-c-books/ https://tfetimes.com/free-c-books/ Maybe it's something for a DMCA takedown, but it doesnt look like the average pirating website(i surely dont know how they look like, was never on one, i swear!) EDIT: Please elaborate why that get downvoted. I seriously dont know. I could understand, if it gets FLAGGED, but... it didn't.
- rwd 10y agohttps://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books is always worth a look.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- akerro 10y agoFireFox OS is a dead project and can be safely removed from the list.
- thefastlane 10y agoeven if that's true, that's hardly a reason to suppress books on the subject.
- caiozo 10y agoAll firefoxOS was removed minutes ago, thanks for the feedback!
- thefastlane 10y agofor those interested, here are the links to the books that were removed: https://leanpub.com/firefoxosinaction https://leanpub.com/firefoxosinaction https://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment https://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment https://leanpub.com/buildinggamesforfirefoxos https://leanpub.com/buildinggamesforfirefoxos
- ramadis 10y agoThese are awesome for JS: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
- caiozo 10y agoadded!
- UltimateFloofy 10y agoShould probably remove famo.us as a resource. They've rebranded a little while ago.
- caiozo 10y agoI removed minutes ago, thank you for the feedback!
- caiozo 10y agoHi guys! Thank you for enjoying my little project! Please to add new books just follow this instruction (https://github.com/devfreebooks/devfreebooks.github.io#how-to-add-books https://github.com/devfreebooks/devfreebooks.github.io#how-t...). This is a old project which I'm reviving it, so there are some old ebooks which I will remove or update links soon. Thanks!
- lyut 10y agoNice resource, any reason it's missing C++ books?
- mohsinr 10y agoFirst/Second book in nodejs link broken for: Learn to Create Node.js Applications from Scratch
- caiozo 10y agoThank you for the feedback!
- FT_intern 10y agoAm I the only one who dislikes these free resource type collections? One, they present too many choices of dubious value. The most important part of book recommendations is a vetting of a few resources that are guaranteed to be enlightening. Two, the monetary cost of a book isn't the largest "cost". The largest cost is the time spent reading the book, which again means that the most value that can be added is through the vetting of the contents of the book compared to all other alternatives.
- iamdave 10y agoIs "too many choices" in this context really that valid of a critique when the entire purpose is to "choose what's applicable to your need, ignore what isn't"?
- r3bl 10y ago> The most important part of book recommendations is a vetting of a few resources that are guaranteed to be enlightening. That's a difficult thing to make since you have to be subjective when suggesting a resource. For example, in awesome-scifi's novels section[0], we as the maintainers try to tackle this project by requesting from the PR submitter to add a subjective description on why the submitter thinks that the novel in question is awesome (backed up by the name of the submitter so you know exactly who wrote that description), to add a Goodreads rating at the time of submitting a PR, and an emoji if it contains more than 100k ratings on Goodreads (indicating that it's a popular one). Now, I'm obviously being subjective when talking about a list I'm one of the maintainers of, but when I'm searching for a book, I get to see if it has a good rating, if it got a lot of ratings, and a subjective description of why the person who submitted it thinks it's awesome. It works rather well in my case. [0] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-scifi#novels https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-scifi#novels
- caiozo 10y agoA lot of users using DevFreeBooks, thank you guys! https://twitter.com/crp_underground/status/796430774354341888 https://twitter.com/crp_underground/status/79643077435434188...
- gluejar 10y agoIs there any reason to to this without cooperation with https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books which already has over 4K commits and 16K forks?
- jlarocco 10y agoI agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?
- fapjacks 10y agoI'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.
- PuffinBlue 10y agoYou hate some repos?
- fapjacks 10y agoDo you like systemd?
- PuffinBlue 10y agoTouché
- jlarocco 10y agoI guess bookmarking would explain it, but seems like the wrong tool for the job IMO. Forking means you have to do extra work to get the latest version of the code, even if you're not making any local changes. Using the "watch" or "star" feature or an actual bookmark means you'll always go straight to the most up to date version. > Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them. I don't know what it means to "hate" a repo, but whatever it means, forking the repo actually means you won't be keeping tabs on them because your personal fork will have no activity until you pull from the original. And if you need to go to the original to get updates, why not just go straight there?
- tedmiston 10y agoDirect link to the repo if you also want to star it. https://github.com/devfreebooks/devfreebooks.github.io https://github.com/devfreebooks/devfreebooks.github.io
- oolongCat 10y agoWhenever I need to find resources for anything programming related I google "awesome WHAT_I_NEED" find the awesome git repo and follow the links, if I find anything interesting I search for the link on hn and reddit and try to see if there are any discussions based on the link. profit??
- thenormal 10y agoNot really a collection, but agregator