Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#11

Post by strzibny » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

vich wrote: post #4

I am just starting the process of migrating away from Heroku, so this is perfect timing. As a full stack dev, I've always done the bare minimum with deployment as I never found the process particularly enjoyable. In the past, I would always just copy-paste build configurations from past projects, or some online resources, and wouldn't spend much time digging into the details or really understanding the ins and outs o…

Thank you! I think that understanding things better makes it more enjoyable, actually.

If you'll have any feedback for me or questions down the line, just send me a DM.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#12

Post by copperx » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

I really like the way the book looks. Can you share details about how you wrote it / typesetted it?

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#13

Post by anonymous532 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

strzibny wrote: post #2

Hi fellow readers of HN, I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this post about!). After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write down a resource I felt was missing on the market: A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first application…

Not interested in this book, but maybe you find my opinion of any value:

Your website comes off as hustle to get money without content:

* The first section where you describe your product, you avoid all that the product is, making me think you don't actually have content which you want to show off(the book image is digital with no mention of it being an ebook, the description is about me and tehnologies, no preview, no list of concrete things I learn)

* In the next section you continue marketing a dream instead of the actual content, then you sell reviews, a story and others' opinion. Again, I conclude that you don't want me to form my own opinion of potentially bad content.

* "What I'll get" is meta content, things I should see after being sold the content. At that point I clicked off the website thinking it's a scam.

Before commenting this I went one more time to make sure I didn't miss anything and discovered that you actually do have chapters content and preview, just past the point where I clicked off.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#14

Post by strzibny » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

jalino23 wrote: post #3

deployment is always the one Ive struggled with. there so much tutorial about building a webapp and almost always all of them assumes you can deploy. and I could not find dedicated resources for deployment. thank you so much for this!

I actually think there are many resources online, but nothing that takes you from the beginning to the end. So unless you know what to search for, you won't find it.

This is especially true for security. How do you know things are secure once your deployment works?

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#15

Post by __blockcipher__ » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

This might just be paranoia but a couple of the early comments on this thread feel very astro-turfy. For example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vich (hasn't commented since aug 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=matthieuchabert (hasn't commented for 10 months)

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vivty is slightly sketchy as well but not super cut and dry

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#16

Post by msie » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

I wished there was coverage of Apache http but otherwise a very interesting book!

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#17

Post by nawgz » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #15

This might just be paranoia but a couple of the early comments on this thread feel very astro-turfy. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vich (hasn't commented since aug 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=matthieuchabert (hasn't commented for 10 months) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vivty is slightly sketchy as well but not super cut and dry

Show HN has a major problem with that these days. The comments that are just like "perfect timing! I have never seen a resource for this and I'm just learning it now" are really facile, no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this, and it's contrasted starkly with the one comment giving feedback on the page which is that it has no content at all unless you buy it.

I find it very hard to believe the ratio of happy purchasers already seeing value vs. questioners about what this really is being 5:1 or more. Sad to see.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#18

Post by strzibny » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

vivty wrote: post #9

As someone new to deployment this book was a great read. I learnt a breadth of new techniques (ssh, security (e.g. fail2ban, selinux, permissions), bash commands, dns and configuration of a vps) and i also liked, that the author gave advice on which tools could be helpful (e.g. Ansible). The book however does not go into detail on these tools (ansible, terraform), its goal is to teach the basics of deploying an app o…

Thanks for a nice review. The book is already long as it is, so I only provide some general ideas behind these tools. The path forward might be very different from person to person. Some will want to convert the Bash code to Ansible and some are already running Kubernetes clusters at work :)

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#19

Post by rmbyrro » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

anonymous532 wrote: post #13

strzibny wrote: post #2

Hi fellow readers of HN, I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this post about!). After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write down a resource I felt was missing on the market: A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first application…

Not interested in this book, but maybe you find my opinion of any value: Your website comes off as hustle to get money without content: * The first section where you describe your product, you avoid all that the product is, making me think you don't actually have content which you want to show off(the book image is digital with no mention of it being an ebook, the description is about me and tehnologies, no preview,…

I happened to have a quite different view.

It was clear to me the content I was supposed to get.

The only reason I didn't purchase is because the value proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup deployment" is not smart, to me at least.

I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales and peace of mind.

Edit: I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long stretch.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

#20

Post by strzibny » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #16

I wished there was coverage of Apache http but otherwise a very interesting book!

I chose NGINX because it's what I use and have a good performance. I am curious, why are you interested in Apache in particular? Is that what you run now?