I always thought "Building X in Y" would be a great brand for a series of books. There was a dBase III book in the mid 80's that I loved that took you though building an invoicing system for a fictional company. It wasn't just about learning the language/runtime but rather took you though the author's thought process and outlined the pros and cons of different approaches and db schemas.
Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
121–130 of 232 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#122http://www.nand2tetris.org/
On a similar topic but a bit less project oriented: Charles Petzolds "CODE The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
100% yes.
I started with Elements of Computing: creating a half-adder and then a full-adder chip. But, I couldn't understand how I reached my solution—I was relying on my intuition. Then, I started reading "Code", which takes the reader on a journey from shining flash lights to communicate with your neighbor, all the way to bridging the gap between boolean algebra and building a relay.
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#123A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation https://www.amazon.com/Retargetable-Compiler-Design-Implemen... A most excellent grimoire.
Misread this as "A Regretable C Compiler" -- likely what would happen to me without a text like this!
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#124Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial ( https://www.railstutorial.org/ ) is a great example of this. It'll run you through building a twitter clone and introduce you to git, heroku, a bit of CSS/HTML, and even goes into AJAX a bit. I can't recommend it enough to people looking to get into rails.
I am interested in the heroku part, but I would like that for different services. Like Amazon, Digital Ocean (I used it for single VPS but I'd like to see how to set up different vps, connect with each other, do vertical and horizontal scaling, etc). Any recommendations in this area?
Packer + Docker + custom cloud elastic stuff.
You can use docker compose and swarm but at some point you need to interface with how the cloud offering does elastic scaling (for example google has instance groups and deploy templates).
I haven't seen a good resource on this last part other than PaaS/IaaS doc itself. So I am curious as well.
There sort of needs to be a packer of deployment + composition but I suppose that is what chef and puppet are sort of for (I despise those tools).
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#125Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial ( https://www.railstutorial.org/ ) is a great example of this. It'll run you through building a twitter clone and introduce you to git, heroku, a bit of CSS/HTML, and even goes into AJAX a bit. I can't recommend it enough to people looking to get into rails.
is there something similar to this but for python based frameworks, or javascript based? Seems like every great tutorial / books that I find are using ruby
Django has good tutorials, I don't know about building "one app" though. I'm sure you can find some of lesser quality; Hartl's tutorial is one of the very best.
If you don't mind drawing out your learning process, you could walk through Hartl's tutorial and do the equivalent in Python (probably with much help from google). So you couldn't use his code examples, but you could set up the same DB structure, the same types of tests, etc, and hit all the important parts of the web dev process.
Edit: found this in another comment below. Just thought I'd include it in case you gloss over it! https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial...
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#126Programming from the Ground Up teaches x86 assembler from first principles. All on a free OS (Linux using asm). There is a free version available online, but if you want to support the author you can buy it from amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Ground-Up-Jonathan-Bartle...
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#127The Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap series by David J. Gingery.
The series is certainly worth reading for the learning, but actually doing it? Don't bother. The books were written when hobby-level machine tools were very expensive. In these days of cheap Asian imports, it's not worth building your own from DIY castings unless you're doing it for fun. I will say that the first book (metal casting) is very useful, because you can learn to make aluminum castings easily and then mach…
Would anyone do it but for the fun? I thought that was the whole point.
It's on my todo list. Never enough time, but I've got a little forge already, at least!
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#128Missing Clojure example here. "Clojure for the brave and true" was a little disappointing.
If one shows up, I'd love a ping. I'm also interested in a good Clojure example!
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#129A bit late to the party, but I've been making by way though "Developing Games With Ruby" (https://leanpub.com/developing-games-with-ruby/read)
It's really good and the game is actually pretty fun.
Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The series is certainly worth reading for the learning, but actually doing it? Don't bother. The books were written when hobby-level machine tools were very expensive. In these days of cheap Asian imports, it's not worth building your own from DIY castings unless you're doing it for fun. I will say that the first book (metal casting) is very useful, because you can learn to make aluminum castings easily and then mach…
Would anyone do it but for the fun? I thought that was the whole point. It's on my todo list. Never enough time, but I've got a little forge already, at least!
No, when the series was written the point was the tools, not the process. Back then a hobbyist metal lathe or shaper was pretty expensive, and this was a low cost way to get one.
These days, not so much.