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Making Software
- georgewsinger 1y agoThe author should make a meta-entry about how he makes the (insanely beautiful) diagrams in the book (ideally walking through the process).
- psadauskas 1y agoIn the FAQ: 07 How do you make the illustrations? By hand, in Figma. There's no secret - it's as complicated as it looks.
- ivl 1y agoThe pair of animations on the page are beautifully done, not just technically but aesthetically as well. If the rest of the book is like that I'll be getting a copy.
- behnamoh 1y agoHe has more content with figures on another platform: https://typefully.com/DanHollick https://typefully.com/DanHollick
- frank20022 1y agowow, excellent job here!
- felipemesquita 1y agoThe subtitle “A reference manual for people who design and build software” seems at odds with the description: > This book won’t teach you how to actually make software […] It’s a manual that explains how the things you use everyday actually work. You don’t need to be technical to read this - there are a lot of pictures and diagrams to do the heavy lifting. You just need to be curious.
- chromanoid 1y agoyeah, I totally agree. It's like there was a shift in goals after the author made the title. Maybe explaining the basics was so much fun, that the initial idea got lost... I also don't think knowing how a crt monitor works is instrumental for people who want to make software. The domain is cool, but it doesn't match the content. whatissoftware.com might be better. when it is explained how pixel, gpu or llm work, I would at least expect some intro to Von-Neumann-Architecture.
- dijksterhuis 1y agoA thing for a specific audience, not a thing with a specific purpose, is how i read the subtitle. the subtitle doesnt say what the reference manual is a reference for. just that software people might like it.
- jaapz 1y agoAudience: people who design and build software Subject: how the things used every day by people who design and build software work Not the subject: how to design and build software
- martin_henk 1y agoReally rad!
- cjr 1y agolooks great, i'd definitely pay for a coffee table style version of a book like this!
- Apfel 1y agoStunningly beautiful landing page. I would never normally comment on the aesthetics of anything in the dev sphere but that completely blew me away. I'll preorder for sure. I'd echo the other comment mentioning that a coffee-table version of this would be great.
- neogodless 1y agoLooked up the author's main site: https://alcohollick.com/ https://alcohollick.com/ > Dan Hollick. > Design, technically. Blogs about using Figma to create things (like this).
- dimal 1y agoAgreed, it's aesthetically beautiful. It should be a coffee table book. But for the web, it has terrible usability. Really, really terrible in multiple ways. My comments will be harsh, but since the creator is obviously very skilled, he should know better. Why multicolumn text? So it looks like an old printed manual? At first view, it's not clear where the first column ends. This is not something we see on the web (because there's no need for it), so it's not clear that the content flows from one column to the next. When the viewport is sized to two columns, I need to scroll down to finish the first column, then scroll back up to read where it continues on the second column. Justified text is bad on the web. We're starting to get some better features to make it usable, but it's not widely supported, so right ragged text is always more readable. There are numerous animations that never stop. This is highly distracting and makes it very difficult to read the text. I'm sure there are more issues but the site is so unusable for me, I won't continue trying. So, yeah. It's gorgeous design. I love it. But it's for the sake of aesthetics, not for the user's sake. It's completely unusable to me. Since this is the first installment, I hope the designer will keep the aesthetics but improve the usability in future installments.
- dsego 1y ago> Justified text is bad on the web. Is there any reason why justified is okay printed but not on the web.
- khana 1y ago[dead]
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoVery cool resource!
- xabush 1y agoAmazing design! Just joined the mailing list
- khaledh 1y agoVery nice. The design reminds me of a website that I forgot to bookmark a long while ago, it was about explaining network protocols at the wire level, and it had some of the most amazing visuals that I ever saw. It's a shame that I forgot what it was, and googling doesn't help. If anyone knows what I'm talking about please share the link.
- virogenesis 1y agoLet us know if you find that site asking for my kid :)
- promiseofbeans 1y agoLooks like it might have been VisualLand.net, which isn't around anymore. Looking at the archive of the site (https://web.archive.org/web/20130811073141/http%3A//www.visualland.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130811073141/http%3A//www.visu...), most of their animations / diagrams were Flash, so no longer run, and don't seem to work with archive.org's emulator either.
- khaledh 1y agoNo, that's not it unfortunately. It was a single page with a style of diagrams that shows a high-level format of something, with arrows to a zoomed-in version that details the structure of the fields. I remember its colour scheme being dominated by light blue and green, IIRC.
- mattbee 1y agoExceptional landing page, very exciting project.
- vivzkestrel 1y agoCommendable effort, i would also like to recommend some topics/chapters/lessons whatever you want to call it - How microprocessors and microcontrollers work - Types of storage => RAM / ssd/ hdd / flash drives and storage formats NTFS, FAT32 - OS stuff (theading, multiprocessing, coroutines, scheduling, paging, priority) - Some data structures stuff (trees, stacks, queues, graphs etc)
- joshbaptiste 1y agoCoreDumpped https://www.youtube.com/@CoreDumpped https://www.youtube.com/@CoreDumpped on YT is also a great animated reference or refresher on such topics..
- vivzkestrel 1y agoalso would like to add a section about packets, network packets, tcp packets, udp packets, http packets. would be real nice to see what each packet is like in a very visually friendly way
- clausz 1y agoHow old is this? Copyright at the bottom of the page says "1990".
- junon 1y agoIt's definitely not from 1990.
- rossant 1y agoProbably the author himself is from 1990.
- gregschlom 1y agoI think it's a cool little easter egg. Goes well with the technical illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk at the top and the pixelated font for the titles. Also, maybe the author meant to say he started thinking about this book since 1990, too. Either way the copyright year doesn't matter. You can put anything
- croemer 1y agoI'm confused, I can't find the content anywhere. I clicked on the TOC items but that just underlined the words. Is this just an announcement?
- falcor84 1y agoYes, just an announcement. There's an FAQ at the bottom: >When will it launch? > I'm not entirely sure yet. I'd love to get it out before the European summer this year. It's a lot of work to illustrate everything so you might need to have some patience.
- skadamat 1y agoThere seems to be some content previews here: https://typefully.com/DanHollick https://typefully.com/DanHollick
- WillAdams 1y agoWhich chapters are done? I was very excited to go to (and link/reference) Chapter 2: Fonts and Vectors but it doesn't seem to be done yet? The progress indicator shows that this is only just begun?
- croemer 1y agoNo chapters are done - it's a bit weird that this fact is buried deep down in the FAQs. I would have expected the fact it's an announcement to be mentioned above the fold.
- kookamamie 1y agoLooks like form-over-function to me. Cool looks, little content.
- scubbo 1y agoIt's just an announcement page, for now.
- yapyap 1y agoHonestly you had me at the graphics, really neat.
- game_the0ry 1y agoSame. That site is masterful example of just cool design.
- dirtybirdnj 1y agoI really like those illustrations I hope you keep going with this progress. Looks great and I think it could be a very engaging tool because of its visual appeal. Don't let the haters get to you. Let him cook people.
- agos 1y agothe design is really cool, but the two columns are really confusing on a screen that is not tall enough to fully contain them
- XCSme 1y agoNice landing page, but I'm confused. The header is about software, but many diagrams are about hardware.
- stronglikedan 1y agoIt'll come in handy for when I try to destroy a hard drive by getting the actuator arm to move back and forth at the drive's harmonic frequency.
- evanletz 1y agoThis is awesome. Reminds me of that book "How Things Work" that breaks down the everyday item into understandable pieces
- MatthiasWandel 1y agonice, but spotted several inaccuracies on the landing page. perhaps not the best reference.
- zh3 1y agoYes, very first item:- > When your finger gets close to the screen it causes a disturbance in the magnetic field that the electrodes sense. Sure should be capacitive?
- VoltCraft 1y agocopyright 1990? I doubt that. layout and finish are first rate on this.signed up for the mailing list - hoping it will be touched again in 1991
- meindnoch 1y agoThe table of contents seems to have a whole chapter on "AI and ML" before starting the next chapter with "What is a byte?". Funny.
- 0xEF 1y agoI'm getting the impression that the book will not be organized in any real linear or iterative order, just sections that allow you to jump around and read what you want.
- skadamat 1y agoLovely website! I stumbled into this other account by the same author that showcases some of the work that might end up in this 'book': https://typefully.com/DanHollick https://typefully.com/DanHollick
- tenacious_tuna 1y agoThis reminds me aesthetically of The Way Things Work [1] which was one of my favorite books as a kid. Having a similar wordly reference as an adult has been a goal for a while. [1] https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-way-things-work-newly-revised-edition-the-newly-revised-edition-from-levers-to-lasers-windmills-to-wi-fi-a-visual-guide-to-the-world-of-machines./9780544824386.html https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-way-things-work-newly-revise...
- rkuykendall-com 1y agoA cool recent one for large-scale infrastructure is "Engineering in Plain Sight": https://practical.engineering/book https://practical.engineering/book
- progbits 1y agoI was disappointed in that one unfortunately. Too much name dropping of random pieces without offering any insights why they are needed. You learn much more just skimming through a wiki article.
- berelig 1y agoI've been looking around for a book like this that has scientific/engineering topics presented in a bite-sized fashion so a teenager (or even adults) can discover which ones pique their interests and are worth a deeper dive. Would this book work or is it a bit too simple? Does anyone have another book to recommend?
- tenacious_tuna 1y agoit's been a couple decades since I've read it, but I'd buy it again as an adult. Like the peer comment says, "Engineering in Plain Sight" purports to be similar and I bought my dad a copy last christmas. Planning to spend some of my professionial development stipend on a copy this year.
- kridsdale1 1y ago
- scop 1y agoI'm sensing an uncomfortable amount of human labor behind this. Even worse it appears to be labor done for the sake of the thing itself. shudder Terrible and makes me feel bad about myself. Back to the AI slop I go!
- exe34 1y agosome people got all the discipline!
- kmoser 1y agoThe illustrations are definitely the secret sauce that makes this so engaging and informative. I'd also like to see links to where I can learn more about particular topics online. For example: > Or maybe you’ve wondered why we call it a Gaussian blur? Nowhere is Carl Friedrich Gauss mentioned, which is unfortunate. This should really link to the Wikipedia entry for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_blur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_blur.
- sfn42 1y agoWhen you know the term gaussian (blur) it's trivial to do a Google search
- internetter 1y agoGoogle does not return the best content.
- sfn42 1y agoIt usually returns good enough content for me
- coolThingsFirst 1y agoSo.... none of the chapters are available?
- pier25 1y agoHow were the animations done? From inspecting the DOM it's just animated SVGs but I'm guessing these were authored with some other tool. Initially I thought these were made with Rive but AFAIK their engine runs on <canvas>.
- oneoverten 1y agoJust figma apparently, it's disclosed in the FAQ.
- cush 1y agoGorgeous UI
- robocat 1y agoWhen your finger gets close to the [touch] screen it causes a disturbance in the *magnetic* field that the electrodes sense. Surely they mean electric field - for a capacitive touch screen.
- constantcrying 1y agoHow do you cause a disturbance in an electric field without causing a disturbance in the magnetic field?
- robocat 1y agoTo imply capacitive touch sensing uses magnetics is just so wrong - I can't imagine how someone trying to be technical could make such an egregious error. A material can affect an electric field without affecting a magnetic field: electrically conductive (versus insulator that won't affect a field so much except via dielectric effects). A material can affect a magnetic field without much affecting an electric field e.g. ferrites are non-conducting. A finger changes the capacitance between two "plates" and that is what is detected. Also the attached drawing shows diamonds but I've only ever seen flat wires myself (when looking closely at touch screens you can sometimes see the transparent sense wires). But I'm no specialist and I don't know how correct the drawing is.
- constantcrying 1y agoChanges in the electric field of a capacitor cause changes in the magnetic field. Electric and magnetic fields aren't Independent. Again, I asked about disturbances, Maxwells equations make it pretty obvious that changes in one cause changes in the other.
- robocat 1y agoPedantically correct but rather irrelevant to the topic of capacitive touch sensors. Your point just isn't helpful.
- 1y ago
- ValveFan6969 1y agoI'm an Atheist, and I would like to know if AI models have the ability to detect sarcasm? Is there a way to make them understand that? Or maybe just give context in parentheses of something sarcastic I'm about to say? If I wanted to, can I just tell the AI that everything I am about to say is sarcastic? Maybe put quotation marks over the things I am about to say so that the AI comprehends the context? If anyone has done this and made success, I'd really like to know how you did it and if there's any tricks to accomplishing that.
- bombela 1y agoOn my old phone it was a smooth and stable experience. I really liked it.
- thallavajhula 1y agoWhen you sign up for the mailing list, you get a response back with status: 200 | created. chef's kiss Something so basic and yet, so aesthetically pleasing.
- pflanze 1y agoI think the hard drive platter moves in the wrong direction--it pushes the head into the platter instead of away from it if it gets too close.
- mindtarrif 1y agoGuess we are judging this book by the cover