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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

#31

Post by throwaway1892 »

ainiriand wrote: post #9
throwaway1892 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the barrier to contribution aims to act as a filter against poor/troll contributions. Also the necessary skills to submit a book overlap a lot with the skills of the people who might be interested.

Really interesting to reflect on the fact that a lower barrier of entry is not always equal to a better choice. There could be a lot of philosophy around this subject, leading us to: should voting be constrained by technology or knowledge of some sort? Is the action motivated by knowledge better to the uninformed one? Sorry for all this off-topic but it is kinda related. I would really love to hear your opinions on t…

Adding any kind of discrimination to an election process (which is a right and has to be open to all) is not a good idea, since it opens the way to all sort of abuse (see the comment on literacy tests), in the way it is evaluated. I don't see a way for such a test to exist, without any bias that could create discrimination.

And even if people are informed, it does not mean they would chose according to that knowledge, since I think a lot of people vote not according to their brain, but follow their emotions or the expectations of their social group.

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

#32

Post by thefastlane »

caiozo wrote: post #26
akerro wrote: post #19

FireFox OS is a dead project and can be safely removed from the list.

All firefoxOS was removed minutes ago, thanks for the feedback!

for those interested, here are the links to the books that were removed:

https://leanpub.com/firefoxosinaction

https://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment

https://leanpub.com/buildinggamesforfirefoxos

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

#35

Post by FT_intern »

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 vetting of the contents of the book compared to all other alternatives.

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

#39

Post by jlarocco »

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?

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

#40

Post by iamdave »

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"?
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