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Ask HN: Best book structure

22 points by selmat 9y ago

What is the best book structure you have ever read? sidenote: we are talking about technical books.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
weaksauce 9y ago
Eloquent ruby was one of my favorite technical books to read. Short and concise(10-20 pages each) topic chapters with motivation opening, explanation of the subject and ending with a real world example from rails or ruby or some other opensource library. The writing and clarity of explanation is the top quality I look for in technical writing though. Edit... Looking at your past submission I would go with project based layout that focuses on one topic at a time but touches on the other topics as needed. With questions at the end of each chapter and project ideas / part lists for home exploration. Sounds like a fun project, good luck!
rcavezza 9y ago
POODR (Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby) by Sandi Metz is my favorite. Each idea in every chapter is backed up by a very specific example of refactoring. I can't really put a description on the type of structure, but I love the book structure.
brudgers 9y ago
GNU Emacs Manual...the printed version. Which reminds me to say that print is a book structure.
z1mm32m4n 9y ago
I’m a huge fan of Practical Typography by Matthew Butterick. - If you only read it linearly it gives you the most crucial points early up front. - It does an excellent job of linking between and to relevant sections. The most natural way to read the book is to read it non-linearly. - It balances depth and brevity. https://practicaltypography.com https://practicaltypography.com
itamarst 9y ago
It's very dependent on what you're trying to explain. There's no one right answer. Do you have a specific goal in mind?
gallerdude 9y ago
Jon Duckett: HTML/CSS It's really beautiful, and a crazy visual way to learn how to design web pages. And it ramps up slowly and nicely enough for you to fully understand everything.
yesenadam 9y ago
Well, it's hard to think of anything radically unique. But some memorable things that come to mind: - the way Graham, Knuth & Patashnik's Concrete Mathematics has the students' comments, silly or enlightening, in the margins. Its also very well designed and put together. - I absolutely love the design of Sedgewick & Wayne's Algorithms (4th ed.) The fonts, colour palette, diagrams illustrating algorithms etc, are all miraculously awesome. The next algorithms book I looked at seemed so tedious and incompetent I wanted to complain. - I love raganwald's JavaScript Allongé apart from the pictures. But there are pictures throughout of coffee, coffee machines, coffee bushes etc with coffee-related captions, all totally unrelated to the text, that somehow work, like a breath of fresh air through the book. - Needham's Visual Complex Analysis is a marvel of clarity in word and picture. - Eloquent Javascript (I read the online version[0]) is impressively well-designed. A good mix of covering-the-basics and projects. A clean, simple and beautiful form. [0] http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/
gvajravelu 9y ago
The book structure depends on your goals for the reader. Books that are for teaching a skill to a beginner generally follow a project based approach. You start with a basic concept and have the reader build a project. Then you go on to a more advanced topic and have the reader build a more advanced project. It would be great if each project built upon the previous ones. I think that is one reason why Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial is so popular: https://www.railstutorial.org/book https://www.railstutorial.org/book. Then there are reference books. These are for experienced people to go back and relearn a concept they forgot. These books are great when organized with a clear table of contents for easily looking up topics. They don't need elaborate projects, but they do need examples to demonstrate the application of the concept. Something like the C++ reference would fall into this category: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/. Hope that helps. Good luck!

22 points by selmat 9y ago

What is the best book structure you have ever read? sidenote: we are talking about technical books.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

weaksauce 9y ago

Eloquent ruby was one of my favorite technical books to read. Short and concise(10-20 pages each) topic chapters with motivation opening, explanation of the subject and ending with a real world example from rails or ruby or some other opensource library. The writing and clarity of explanation is the top quality I look for in technical writing though. Edit... Looking at your past submission I would go with project based layout that focuses on one topic at a time but touches on the other topics as needed. With questions at the end of each chapter and project ideas / part lists for home exploration. Sounds like a fun project, good luck!

rcavezza 9y ago

POODR (Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby) by Sandi Metz is my favorite. Each idea in every chapter is backed up by a very specific example of refactoring. I can't really put a description on the type of structure, but I love the book structure.

brudgers 9y ago

GNU Emacs Manual...the printed version. Which reminds me to say that print is a book structure.

z1mm32m4n 9y ago

I’m a huge fan of Practical Typography by Matthew Butterick. - If you only read it linearly it gives you the most crucial points early up front. - It does an excellent job of linking between and to relevant sections. The most natural way to read the book is to read it non-linearly. - It balances depth and brevity. https://practicaltypography.com https://practicaltypography.com

itamarst 9y ago

It's very dependent on what you're trying to explain. There's no one right answer. Do you have a specific goal in mind?

gallerdude 9y ago

Jon Duckett: HTML/CSS It's really beautiful, and a crazy visual way to learn how to design web pages. And it ramps up slowly and nicely enough for you to fully understand everything.

yesenadam 9y ago

Well, it's hard to think of anything radically unique. But some memorable things that come to mind: - the way Graham, Knuth & Patashnik's Concrete Mathematics has the students' comments, silly or enlightening, in the margins. Its also very well designed and put together. - I absolutely love the design of Sedgewick & Wayne's Algorithms (4th ed.) The fonts, colour palette, diagrams illustrating algorithms etc, are all miraculously awesome. The next algorithms book I looked at seemed so tedious and incompetent I wanted to complain. - I love raganwald's JavaScript Allongé apart from the pictures. But there are pictures throughout of coffee, coffee machines, coffee bushes etc with coffee-related captions, all totally unrelated to the text, that somehow work, like a breath of fresh air through the book. - Needham's Visual Complex Analysis is a marvel of clarity in word and picture. - Eloquent Javascript (I read the online version[0]) is impressively well-designed. A good mix of covering-the-basics and projects. A clean, simple and beautiful form. [0] http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/

gvajravelu 9y ago

The book structure depends on your goals for the reader. Books that are for teaching a skill to a beginner generally follow a project based approach. You start with a basic concept and have the reader build a project. Then you go on to a more advanced topic and have the reader build a more advanced project. It would be great if each project built upon the previous ones. I think that is one reason why Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial is so popular: https://www.railstutorial.org/book https://www.railstutorial.org/book. Then there are reference books. These are for experienced people to go back and relearn a concept they forgot. These books are great when organized with a clear table of contents for easily looking up topics. They don't need elaborate projects, but they do need examples to demonstrate the application of the concept. Something like the C++ reference would fall into this category: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/. Hope that helps. Good luck!