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> If you’d like more detailed criticism of the book, you can buy my raw unfiltered chapter-by-chapter notes. This will only be available until April 8th, and th

> If you’d like more detailed criticism of the book, you can buy my raw unfiltered chapter-by-chapter notes. This will only be available until April 8th, and then I’ll take it down forever. Click here to purchase. (Link goes to: https://mirdin.com/downloads/notes-on-tidy-first/ https://mirdin.com/downloads/notes-on-tidy-first/) Follow the link and you can buy the detailed criticism of the book for $25. Which is more than the cost of the book new on Amazon ($20, or $24.99 for the Kindle version). Seems somewhere between scummy and scammy.

fnl 3y ago
Oh, wow, scummy to scammy, indeed! It’s all in the fine print… I didn’t bother reading this appendix on the first read of the blog post. Disclaimer: I do really enjoy this book, as it reminds my of uncle Bob’s Clean Code, but a short version, and with the focus on what to do after writing code, when you need to change it or want to understand it better. Yes, it is structured very much like a collection of blog posts. Which is great for me, as I typically work on learning one “tidying” a day or less. So I am not yet done with the book, end-to-end.
jjice 3y ago
Is it scummy and scammy? I don't see anything wrong with someone selling their notes on a subject, no matter the price. The purchaser can choose if it's worth it to them or if it's not. I don't see the scummy or the scammy part here. Am I missing something?
- fnl 3y ago
  To me it implicitly means: “I am selling you my distilled copy of the book at nearly the price of the book. That lets me recoup my investment, and after a few days I will take it offline, so I don’t get a law suit from O’Reilley for copyright infringement.”
mtlynch 3y ago
I admit that my gut reaction is that there's something fishy about selling notes about someone else's book, but thinking about it more, what's the harm? There's nothing deceptive or sneaky about it. There's value in distilling information from a bloated book down to its useful ideas. There are lots of books that are just existing ideas repackaged for a different audience. For example, Atomic Habits is basically a repackaged version of BJ Fogg's research papers. And people see value in that, so why isn't it okay to do that in a more 1:1 way?
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  The short release period gives off "For a limited time only!" vibes, a scummy way to entice people to buy something now because they might not be able to later. It's also unclear that the notes even add value, they're described as "raw unfiltered chapter-by-chapter notes". Are they just random thoughts? Are they a better version of the chapters they line up with? Are they a companion to the book (the notes elaborating on the parts this author found to be too brief)? Are they responses to the contents? You don't know, until you spend more than the cost of the not-actually-bloated book that they cover. > There's value in distilling information from a bloated book down to its useful ideas. Yes, but it's not clear at all that this $25 limited-time-only set of notes actually does that, and they cost more than a book that is decidedly not bloated (it's 100 pages, 33 chapters, and each chapter is quite short).
  - mtlynch 3y ago
    Yeah, I agree. The "limited time only" seems manipulative and totally unnecessary. I'm less convinced by the criticism about the notes potentially not being worth the money. That's true of basically all products. In this case, if the buyer chooses to buy these notes based on the minimal information the author has shared, then the buyer should be ready to accept the possibility that the notes won't be what they expected.
  - jbenoit 3y ago
    He said it was unfiltered. If I was giving out some of my unfiltered thoughts, I don't think I'd want them floating around the Internet for anyone to read at any moment.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      If you’re not comfortable with something “floating around on the internet” show could you possibly be comfortable SELLING that thing to the same people?
      - jbenoit 3y ago
jrpelkonen 3y ago
Unrelated, but this reminded me of this old chestnut that still makes me smile. It is from comp.lang.c FAQ, e.g. <https://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/fall96/netprog/cfaq.html https://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/fall96/netprog/cfaq.html>: The cost is $130.00 from ANSI or $162.50 from Global. Copies of the original X3.159 (including the Rationale) are still available at $205.00 from ANSI or $200.50 from Global. Note that ANSI derives revenues to support its operations from the sale of printed standards, so electronic copies are _not_ available. The mistitled _Annotated ANSI C Standard_, with annotations by Herbert Schildt, contains all but a few pages of ISO 9899; it is published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-881952-0, and sells in the U.S. for approximately $40. (It has been suggested that the price differential between this work and the official standard reflects the value of the annotations.)

fnl 3y ago

Oh, wow, scummy to scammy, indeed! It’s all in the fine print… I didn’t bother reading this appendix on the first read of the blog post. Disclaimer: I do really enjoy this book, as it reminds my of uncle Bob’s Clean Code, but a short version, and with the focus on what to do after writing code, when you need to change it or want to understand it better. Yes, it is structured very much like a collection of blog posts. Which is great for me, as I typically work on learning one “tidying” a day or less. So I am not yet done with the book, end-to-end.

jjice 3y ago

Is it scummy and scammy? I don't see anything wrong with someone selling their notes on a subject, no matter the price. The purchaser can choose if it's worth it to them or if it's not. I don't see the scummy or the scammy part here. Am I missing something?

fnl 3y ago
To me it implicitly means: “I am selling you my distilled copy of the book at nearly the price of the book. That lets me recoup my investment, and after a few days I will take it offline, so I don’t get a law suit from O’Reilley for copyright infringement.”

mtlynch 3y ago

I admit that my gut reaction is that there's something fishy about selling notes about someone else's book, but thinking about it more, what's the harm? There's nothing deceptive or sneaky about it. There's value in distilling information from a bloated book down to its useful ideas. There are lots of books that are just existing ideas repackaged for a different audience. For example, Atomic Habits is basically a repackaged version of BJ Fogg's research papers. And people see value in that, so why isn't it okay to do that in a more 1:1 way?

Jtsummers 3y ago
The short release period gives off "For a limited time only!" vibes, a scummy way to entice people to buy something now because they might not be able to later. It's also unclear that the notes even add value, they're described as "raw unfiltered chapter-by-chapter notes". Are they just random thoughts? Are they a better version of the chapters they line up with? Are they a companion to the book (the notes elaborating on the parts this author found to be too brief)? Are they responses to the contents? You don't know, until you spend more than the cost of the not-actually-bloated book that they cover. > There's value in distilling information from a bloated book down to its useful ideas. Yes, but it's not clear at all that this $25 limited-time-only set of notes actually does that, and they cost more than a book that is decidedly not bloated (it's 100 pages, 33 chapters, and each chapter is quite short).
- mtlynch 3y ago
  Yeah, I agree. The "limited time only" seems manipulative and totally unnecessary. I'm less convinced by the criticism about the notes potentially not being worth the money. That's true of basically all products. In this case, if the buyer chooses to buy these notes based on the minimal information the author has shared, then the buyer should be ready to accept the possibility that the notes won't be what they expected.
- jbenoit 3y ago
  He said it was unfiltered. If I was giving out some of my unfiltered thoughts, I don't think I'd want them floating around the Internet for anyone to read at any moment.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    If you’re not comfortable with something “floating around on the internet” show could you possibly be comfortable SELLING that thing to the same people?
    - jbenoit 3y ago

jrpelkonen 3y ago

Unrelated, but this reminded me of this old chestnut that still makes me smile. It is from comp.lang.c FAQ, e.g. <https://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/fall96/netprog/cfaq.html https://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/fall96/netprog/cfaq.html>: The cost is $130.00 from ANSI or $162.50 from Global. Copies of the original X3.159 (including the Rationale) are still available at $205.00 from ANSI or $200.50 from Global. Note that ANSI derives revenues to support its operations from the sale of printed standards, so electronic copies are _not_ available. The mistitled _Annotated ANSI C Standard_, with annotations by Herbert Schildt, contains all but a few pages of ISO 9899; it is published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-881952-0, and sells in the U.S. for approximately $40. (It has been suggested that the price differential between this work and the official standard reflects the value of the annotations.)