"...But like analyzing a terrible movie that somehow gets made, it's more fun to reason through the “behind the scenes” parts..." I do too. Many times I find i

"...But like analyzing a terrible movie that somehow gets made, it's more fun to reason through the “behind the scenes” parts..." I do too. Many times I find it much more interesting understanding how the sausage is made than what the actual sausage tastes like. This is a great meta review. As somebody who's just published a book for tech teams, I need to be acutely aware of my own work to make sure I'm not falling down the same hole: taking a little bit of knowledge and and trying to fluff it out to appear to be a comprehensive body of work. It's not just the 80s and old coding books. There has been quite a trend over the last decade or so of people over-publishing (I guess that's the term). Promising all sorts of things while delivering on little. In some ways I think this is okay. The received wisdom is that you don't have to know everything, you just have to know more than the reader and be able to explain how to move them a bit forward. Perhaps the key is attitude. Woz says "..'Ive always found the authors come from a position of earnestness, attempting to draw the best conclusions based on decent principles and what they knew at the time they wrote it..." A little humility, careful scoping, and honesty in a tech book can go a long ways. (Insert long discussion here about whether people would buy such a book, and how people are much more naturally attracted to books with a strong emotional impact "Make money with C Now!" than they are books that simply try to helpfully explain something without all the glitz) There is a natural tension at work here.