4 ms·

> As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it. I hope my comment didn't so

> As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it. I hope my comment didn't sound like a back-handed compliment. I genuinely think you're making the right move charging a premium. I read a lot of posts from Patrick McKenzie (patio11 on HN), and he's always urging folks to charge more. It feels like very few people take his advice, so props to you for doing so! > I’m a bit allergic to marketing that tries to cover up weaknesses 100% agree. I'm actually planning on releasing my full book in blog form on my site, a bit like Michael Hartl's "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" [1], so people can judge for themselves whether it's worthwhile to pay for premium features like a PDF copy or video screencasts. > What’s the topic of your book? The plan is to do a soup-to-nuts walk through of popular, lynchpin open-source codebases. I'll take newbie developers from "this codebase is too intimidating, only 10x engineers would grok it" to "oh, that's all there was to it?". I'm a software engineer from a non-traditional / bootcamp background, and I want to help people who are suffering from impostor syndrome to feel like they too can become 10x engineers. I'm starting with a Ruby version manager called RBENV and progressing toward open-source codebases from unicorns like Gitlab, and eventually even the Ruby codebase itself. I've already walked through the entire RBENV codebase on my own, and written 500+ rough pages in a Google doc (over 100k words that I wrote during COVID lockdown). I'm slowly but surely editing it into something that I can show people, but my immediate issue is that a) I don't know anything about the skillset of launching a product, and b) I feel like I only have one shot at a launch, and if my thoughts and words are disjointed, people will write off not only my idea but also me as an engineer and teacher / mentor, and I won't get a 2nd shot at launching. My head says that's BS, but my heart isn't so sure. The first launch is always the hardest. 1. https://www.railstutorial.org/ https://www.railstutorial.org/

dmd149 4y ago
Ambitious and cool project! Over my head as I’m not a coder but I think one bullet you should emphasize is the impostor syndrome part. I think that would resonate strongly. You might like Rob fitzpatrick’s write useful books: http://writeusefulbooks.com/ http://writeusefulbooks.com/ He takes a very product development focused approach to book writing (he wrote the mom test book) and discusses how to find beta readers and such. Best of luck!
- toomanyrichies 4y ago
  Hahaha I'm already half-way through "Write Useful Books", and "The Mom Test" is one of my favorites. Great minds think alike. > Best of luck! Thanks, same to you.
ishvanl 4y ago
> a soup-to-nuts walk through of popular, lynchpin open-source codebases This sounds fantastic. I'm a self taught developer in largely the situation you describe and this book sounds like something that would be amazing for someone like me. Please post it on HN when it's presentable!
- toomanyrichies 4y ago
  I will, thanks for the positive feedback!
selecsosi 4y ago
I've always appreciated the approach taken by https://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html https://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html which has different depths of analysis and scope and gives the user the option of diving into different types of programs. I usually recommend it to friends /colleagues as a foundation when they've had to write networking or other tight performance applications. Evaluating design decisions and process of app evolution is just as important as where a modern piece of software is because it can help provide similar context around getting the product out there now, rather than perfect later. Also the world is constantly changing so trying to make a perfect product is partially an evaluation of how long your solution will even be relevant or how isolated it is from external change.
- toomanyrichies 4y ago
  AOSA and POSA both sound right up my alley. Thanks for sharing!
  - tonyarkles 4y ago
    I'm sad that grad school got really busy and I had to drop out from being an editor on POSA, but it was absolutely fantastic to work with so many fantastic developers and get into their heads a bit. I think Tavish might be hanging around HN too.

dmd149 4y ago

Ambitious and cool project! Over my head as I’m not a coder but I think one bullet you should emphasize is the impostor syndrome part. I think that would resonate strongly. You might like Rob fitzpatrick’s write useful books: http://writeusefulbooks.com/ http://writeusefulbooks.com/ He takes a very product development focused approach to book writing (he wrote the mom test book) and discusses how to find beta readers and such. Best of luck!

toomanyrichies 4y ago
Hahaha I'm already half-way through "Write Useful Books", and "The Mom Test" is one of my favorites. Great minds think alike. > Best of luck! Thanks, same to you.

ishvanl 4y ago

> a soup-to-nuts walk through of popular, lynchpin open-source codebases This sounds fantastic. I'm a self taught developer in largely the situation you describe and this book sounds like something that would be amazing for someone like me. Please post it on HN when it's presentable!

toomanyrichies 4y ago
I will, thanks for the positive feedback!

selecsosi 4y ago

I've always appreciated the approach taken by https://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html https://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html which has different depths of analysis and scope and gives the user the option of diving into different types of programs. I usually recommend it to friends /colleagues as a foundation when they've had to write networking or other tight performance applications. Evaluating design decisions and process of app evolution is just as important as where a modern piece of software is because it can help provide similar context around getting the product out there now, rather than perfect later. Also the world is constantly changing so trying to make a perfect product is partially an evaluation of how long your solution will even be relevant or how isolated it is from external change.

toomanyrichies 4y ago
AOSA and POSA both sound right up my alley. Thanks for sharing!
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  I'm sad that grad school got really busy and I had to drop out from being an editor on POSA, but it was absolutely fantastic to work with so many fantastic developers and get into their heads a bit. I think Tavish might be hanging around HN too.