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Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

devfreebooks.github.io

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Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#41

Post by fapjacks »

jlarocco wrote: post #39
gluejar wrote: post #38

Is there any reason to to this without cooperation with https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books which already has over 4K commits and 16K forks?

I agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#42

Post by jacalata »

iamdave wrote: post #40
FT_intern wrote: post #35

Am I the only one who dislikes these free resource type collections? One, they present too many choices of dubious value. The most important part of book recommendations is a vetting of a few resources that are guaranteed to be enlightening. Two, the monetary cost of a book isn't the largest "cost". The largest cost is the time spent reading the book, which again means that the most value that can be added is through…

Is "too many choices" in this context really that valid of a critique when the entire purpose is to "choose what's applicable to your need, ignore what isn't"?

The full phrase was "too many choices of dubious value"

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#43

Post by PuffinBlue »

fapjacks wrote: post #41
jlarocco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

You hate some repos?

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#45

Post by jlarocco »

fapjacks wrote: post #41
jlarocco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

I guess bookmarking would explain it, but seems like the wrong tool for the job IMO. Forking means you have to do extra work to get the latest version of the code, even if you're not making any local changes. Using the "watch" or "star" feature or an actual bookmark means you'll always go straight to the most up to date version.

> Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

I don't know what it means to "hate" a repo, but whatever it means, forking the repo actually means you won't be keeping tabs on them because your personal fork will have no activity until you pull from the original. And if you need to go to the original to get updates, why not just go straight there?

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#46

Post by b_bellomo »

fapjacks wrote: post #41
jlarocco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

You can 'watch' repos. You should do that instead of forking them.

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#47

Post by r3bl »

FT_intern wrote: post #35

Am I the only one who dislikes these free resource type collections? One, they present too many choices of dubious value. The most important part of book recommendations is a vetting of a few resources that are guaranteed to be enlightening. Two, the monetary cost of a book isn't the largest "cost". The largest cost is the time spent reading the book, which again means that the most value that can be added is through…

> The most important part of book recommendations is a vetting of a few resources that are guaranteed to be enlightening.

That's a difficult thing to make since you have to be subjective when suggesting a resource.

For example, in awesome-scifi's novels section[0], we as the maintainers try to tackle this project by requesting from the PR submitter to add a subjective description on why the submitter thinks that the novel in question is awesome (backed up by the name of the submitter so you know exactly who wrote that description), to add a Goodreads rating at the time of submitting a PR, and an emoji if it contains more than 100k ratings on Goodreads (indicating that it's a popular one).

Now, I'm obviously being subjective when talking about a list I'm one of the maintainers of, but when I'm searching for a book, I get to see if it has a good rating, if it got a lot of ratings, and a subjective description of why the person who submitted it thinks it's awesome. It works rather well in my case.

[0] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-scifi#novels

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#49

Post by gog »

fapjacks wrote: post #41
jlarocco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree they should cooperate, but I'm curious about the 16k forks. What's the point in forking a project like this? Adding changes and submitting pull requests would be the obvious thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case because there are only 4K commits and less than 30 open pull requests. So anybody know what's up with all the forks?

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

There is a "Star this repo" option for just this case.

But forking has its benefits if you want to make sure that the original repository does not disappear.

Re: Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

#50

Post by fapjacks »

gog wrote: post #49
fapjacks wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the forks are a form of bookmarking. At least for my part, I fork every single repository that might even be slightly interesting for me in the future. Hell, I even fork repos that I explicitly hate, just so I can keep tabs on them or learn more about them.

There is a "Star this repo" option for just this case. But forking has its benefits if you want to make sure that the original repository does not disappear.

I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about, but unfortunately, I've had a few repos disappear because the original was served with a DMCA. Github is fast when presented with a DMCA (but also equally fast when presented with a counter-DMCA notice, thankfully). You'll need to clone it off of Github if you really want to ensure its survivability.
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