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Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment

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

#111

Post by strzibny »

benburton wrote: post #91

I'd love to give this a read from someone with a lot of experience in the source material, but given a $50 pricetag for a book I don't need to read I'm not into it. Who are your editors?

Would you be interested in giving it a read in exchange for your feedback? I might be open to that (DM me https://twitter.com/strzibnyj).

I already lost more then one year of earnings working on the book and I couldn't afford a professional editor. So editors are only volunteers, and therefore I don't have a single editor for the whole book.

(I know that as a potential customer you don't care about my excuses, I am just explaining my situation. Earning money on technical content is hard.)

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

#112

Post by strzibny »

yodsanklai wrote: post #96
benburton wrote: post #91

I'd love to give this a read from someone with a lot of experience in the source material, but given a $50 pricetag for a book I don't need to read I'm not into it. Who are your editors?

Agree. I'd buy a $50 book only if it has consistent excellent reviews.

The pricetag doesn't reflect just the PDF, though. If you deploy your own database with the demo, you might save way more money in a year. Other similar resources include less and charge more, or do you know one that's better value?

I didn't split it into tears (book, book+code, book+code+...), because I think it works better together. I do realize I am losing some customers this way.

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

#113

Post by strzibny »

no_circuit wrote: post #81
strzibny wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really believe that what I put into the book should be a knowledge a person deploying production application should have. > I just don't think small startups or side-projects should spend so much time getting all the configuration and moving parts right compared to just Docker+Terraform+(IaaS of choice). It's the opposite actually! I show you how to avoid a lot of indirection and have a deploy script in 200 lines o…

Fair enough. :-) Like I said, my impression is that the content seems good! What I can't tell, without reading it, is what the end state of the dev/ops architecture would be along with its maintenance requirements, to understand if it would be a good complete resource to refer to beginners in tech I can't assist myself.

The main idea is building a single server deployment in a secure and maintainable way... and then possibly taking it to 5-10 servers at which point the Bash-only approach is less than ideal (but possible). Then you can pick a better tool of your choice (Ansible, Docker Swarm), but learning it is outside the scope of the book.

The demonstrations are made alongside the indie hackers/early-stage startup mindset. Run a single server, or possibly single server with a dedicated database.

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

#114

Post by strzibny »

MrKey wrote: post #100

Looks like a great work, not much to say, was long looking for such a comprehensive book. Exactly missed a single source which lists all deployment related topics, not too shallow, not too deep. In other words, saw it like an area map of the exact scale I was looking for. Bought instantly.

Ahh thank you so much. I hope you'll like it.

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

#115

Post by strzibny »

nawgz wrote: post #95
jaw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this There's a whole successful social network (Goodreads) built on people's desire to talk about books, frequently in the form of effusive praise. I think being able to trace the product to a single individual (e.g. a book's author) helps make it particularly appealing to leave that sort of feedback: we know it feels great to hear that someone values a…

> frequently in the form of effusive praise I somehow doubt it's in the form of 5:1 ratio of effusive praise to questioning/criticism outside of the true top books there, and then to see this on a random ad where the OP swears he's not contacted anyone about the Show HN and yet all his "happy" "lurking" "customers" pop up with really sweet words within an hour is comical I understand people are nice sometimes, but it…

> it's clearly not organic here.

And yet it's 100% organic here. I was few times on the HN frontpage with my blog (that links my book) so I was hoping some of my readers actually hang out here. I postponed Show HN a few months to get a few hundreds customers first. But that's it.

You don't have to believe me, but it's the truth.

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

#116

Post by strzibny »

scottcodie wrote: post #102

> "The physical signals in wires and the electromagnetic waves are the basic building blocks of the link layer". > So, what is a CPU anyway? A central processing unit (CPU) is your processor (or processor core). > Nevertheless, making a thread-safe code unsafe is more than easy and so if your application works with threads in some ways, make sure things work as expected. Cut the filler and just say what you're trying…

If you have more actionable advise for me, I am all ears. It's my first book, after all.

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

#118

Post by strzibny »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #99

I would not suggest this book to people who want to practice professional software deployments in 2021. This book is setting you up with a limited set of skills that are over-complicated and not best practice. For instance: Server configuration. You should not be monkeying around with OS configs. If you do, it should only be in something like a Docker container, which is an easily tested/updated versioned immutable r…

There is not one single way to do deployments, and what you suggest leads people to vendor lock-ins, rather than the ability to self-host things on their own hardware later on (or if necessary). What I teach is actually a good approach for many, if not most people.

My intention wasn't writing a book on fancy-cloudy deploys for enterprises, but teaching people more about systems they use. I deploy my side projects the way I describe in the book, and I can tell you I have a good time, because everything is straightforward and easy-to-fix.

* Ad Server configuration: I explain deployment with and without containers. People can choose the right path for them. If you would read the book, you might have realized there is not all that much system configuration after all and it's easy to keep up.

* Ad Services with systemd: Hard disagree. systemd-based distributions (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian) are eating the Linux world. systemd is an init system, so even if you don't write a systemd service on your own, you should understand how they work (your databases, firewalls, system services, and even Docker would be managed as a systemd service).

* Databases: This book is not an argument for running the database yourself, but about how you can do it with just 20 lines of Bash. People should decide themselves what's best for the project at hand.

* SELinux: You should absolutely learn it as it's a security layer of your Linux systems. Most resources skip it and then people don't feel confident running with SELinux, and thus deploy less secure systems.

...

I see your whole argument looks like let's run Kubernetes. I don't think it's the right choice for indie hackers and early startups (the target audience of my book).

If you want to go the path of Kubernetes, than my book gives you a great introduction to networking and Docker which are prerequisites for understanding and working with K8s. And SSH, Puma configs, encrypted backups, and other topics are same whether you have K8s or not.

I only use Kubernetes at work, and I prefer doing things without it.

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

#119

Post by harryvederci »

scottcodie wrote: post #102

> "The physical signals in wires and the electromagnetic waves are the basic building blocks of the link layer". > So, what is a CPU anyway? A central processing unit (CPU) is your processor (or processor core). > Nevertheless, making a thread-safe code unsafe is more than easy and so if your application works with threads in some ways, make sure things work as expected. Cut the filler and just say what you're trying…

I hope the HN community will stop doing easy smackdown comments like this. Someone spent a ton of time on this product. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time to post it on HN. That "terrifying" is completely unnecessary, and 100% caused by reactions like yours.

At the very least, please write a "shit sandwich" next time.

[Mandatory "Yada yada yada, I don't know the author, not affiliated to the product, bla bla" here.]

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

#120

Post by scottcodie »

harryvederci wrote: post #119
scottcodie wrote: post #102

> "The physical signals in wires and the electromagnetic waves are the basic building blocks of the link layer". > So, what is a CPU anyway? A central processing unit (CPU) is your processor (or processor core). > Nevertheless, making a thread-safe code unsafe is more than easy and so if your application works with threads in some ways, make sure things work as expected. Cut the filler and just say what you're trying…

I hope the HN community will stop doing easy smackdown comments like this. Someone spent a ton of time on this product. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time to post it on HN. That "terrifying" is completely unnecessary, and 100% caused by reactions like yours. At the very least, please write a "shit sandwich" next time. [Mandatory "Yada yada yada, I don't know the author, not affiliated to the product, bla b…

Sorry, my comment was intended to be direct feedback. I'll try to practice more emotional intelligence in the future.
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