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How to write a programming book

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Re: How to write a programming book

#51

Post by sitkack »

csours wrote: post #49

> "If you ever start the path of writing a book, you should ask yourself why you are doing it." I've wanted to create a short video series for my workplace, but I'm stuck on what the approach and theme should be. The series would be about automotive assembly, and I have a lot of things to talk about, but I keep getting stuck on what people would be interested in and what would be helpful.

Start with a round table, provide a space so that people open up about what they find confusing, try to map out the knowledge gaps.

Is this about design for manufacturing from an assembly standpoint? Would it also cover repair? The spark plugs on a VR6 are inaccessible, can you fix that?

Re: How to write a programming book

#52

Post by mfrisbie »

reificator wrote: post #40
dkersten wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that bothers me is that most intermediary books on a topic tend to start with a good chunk of beginner stuff. For example, many game programming books will cover a ton of beginner material at the start, same with graphics books or books on a particular programming language. I shudder to think of how much duplicated content that I will never read because I'm no longer a beginner is sitting in my bookshel…

This is why I look for gems like Professional Javascript for Web Developers[0][1]. (I can't speak to the latest version, I think I read the 3rd edition from 2012.) It's a book about Javascript that assumes you've written software in other languages before. I believe the book uses Java/C#, Python, and maybe a couple other languages as reference points. It describes language behavior and constructs that may be new to y…

Author of the 4th edition here!

Much credit goes to the author of previous editions, Nicholas Zakas, for dictating the style. He offered this advice when I began the new edition:

I tried to make it a book that had a distinctive approach, which is that it didn't treat the reader with kid gloves and went deep into technical details to people could really understand the language. This, more than anything else, is what people have told me they enjoyed about the book. It was unapologetically not for beginners.

More than anything else, this advice is what guided me in preserving the original style in the new edition.

Re: How to write a programming book

#53

Post by amw-zero »

lmilcin wrote: post #46
jagged-chisel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a commenter here on HN (if my Google-fu serves me, I'll come back and edit with a link) talking about this problem wrt contracted educational services. Folks request intermediate to advanced training. The trainer shows up, finds out that everyone is actually a beginner with this particular technology, and has to adapt the course appropriately. That's pretty good customer service, but it's not something you…

Okay, so you propose all books should be written for noobs just in case noob picks up something for already advanced user? That just doesn't make any sense. Obviously, the author of the book can explain the book is really meant for a user with some prior knowledge and experience of the matter. If the reader ignores it it's not really a problem of the author to deal with. My background is mathematics and, as an exampl…

Agreed. The one thing the Internet surely did was enable self-starters to have their fill of the entirety of human knowledge. But you have to have determination and patience. Some things might not make sense the first time you read them. I come back to things that I’ve already read time and time again, and get new insights out of them each time.

“Oh!!! That’s what they meant here!!!”

I say this once a month with something I’ve read 50 times. We need to reward people for having determination, not make every single book beginner friendly at the expense of deep material. We’re doing the world a huge disservice by limiting the potential of what people could be sharing.

Re: How to write a programming book

#54

Post by Silhouette »

munificent wrote: post #47
clarry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd find out that there is maybe a few thousand people world-wide who are genuinely interested in putting advanced computer science to use. Nah, there are lots of people writing big complex programs with big complex architecture. Architecting programs isn't an "advanced compsci topic", but there are lots and lots of books that don't really talk much about it. Instead they show you how to use your programming lang…

If you haven't read them yet, Design Patterns, The Pragmatic Programmer, and Code Complete, will all help you.

Those are all intermediate/improver kind of books, though. They contain a lot of useful material, and many programmers who haven't studied those subjects would benefit from doing so. However, the ideas would (should) be familiar to any professional programmer with more than a few years of experience. The challenge is where you go after that to continue developing your skills and broadening your experience for the next 5 or 10 or 20 years, rather than becoming the "eternal novice" who is proficient with the basic tools but unaware of more advanced idioms or more strategic issues that would help them to produce much better work.

Re: How to write a programming book

#55

Post by csours »

sitkack wrote: post #51
csours wrote: post #49

> "If you ever start the path of writing a book, you should ask yourself why you are doing it." I've wanted to create a short video series for my workplace, but I'm stuck on what the approach and theme should be. The series would be about automotive assembly, and I have a lot of things to talk about, but I keep getting stuck on what people would be interested in and what would be helpful.

Start with a round table, provide a space so that people open up about what they find confusing, try to map out the knowledge gaps. Is this about design for manufacturing from an assembly standpoint? Would it also cover repair? The spark plugs on a VR6 are inaccessible, can you fix that?

It's about IT for Mfg, so kind of broad. Sorry about the spark plugs. Packaging is a bitch.

Re: How to write a programming book

#56

Post by jsweojtj »

taphangum wrote: post #30
lmilcin wrote: post #10

What pains me about programming books is that due to the market pressure the balance is skewed extremely in the direction of beginner material and there is precious little material for advanced users. If you look at other branches of knowledge, say electronics, there is couple of books for beginners and then massive selection of highly specialized books for experts. I get that part of this is due to multitude of lang…

This is the exact problem that I am working on with my project https://fromtoschool.com . Where we write books and create courses that teach new programming languages and frameworks to experienced developers, using the languages and frameworks that you already know. The style we use to teach is optimized for speed of learning and teaches this way using the 'constructivist' method. I expand on this learning style, and…

Your post in https://fromtoschool.com/why-most-programming-tutorials-are-... has links at the bottom to books and courses -- both point to https://fromtoschool.com/courses which gives me: page not found.

Re: How to write a programming book

#57

Post by taphangum »

jsweojtj wrote: post #56
taphangum wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact problem that I am working on with my project https://fromtoschool.com . Where we write books and create courses that teach new programming languages and frameworks to experienced developers, using the languages and frameworks that you already know. The style we use to teach is optimized for speed of learning and teaches this way using the 'constructivist' method. I expand on this learning style, and…

Your post in https://fromtoschool.com/why-most-programming-tutorials-are-... has links at the bottom to books and courses -- both point to https://fromtoschool.com/courses which gives me: page not found.

Yep, the first book "From jQuery To VueJS" is still in the works. I'll be updating the pages to reflect the coming soon status of the book tomorrow!

But if interested you can leave your email address on the form at the bottom of the post.

Re: How to write a programming book

#58

Post by assadk »

Syzygies wrote: post #14

This is relevant to me because I'll likely be teaching Linear Algebra online in the Fall. I'm rethinking support materials from scratch. This article does not rethink its genre from scratch. And I nearly stopped reading, unwilling to take advice from a fixed pitch body font. I've learned dozens of programming languages, and I find programming books increasingly unreadable. They all give me that feeling of ADHD that a…

I found this quite insightful. Thank you.

Re: How to write a programming book

#59

Post by billme »

munificent wrote: post #48
billme wrote: post #11

Generally speaking, books as a format make no sense. I have seen the financial records for number of popular tech book authors — and numbers related to them having published, for example: products, services, consulting & speaker fees, etc. If the author is trying, they make way more money from the numbers related to them publishing than the book sales. If you like writing long form tech guides, do yourself and your a…

> Generally speaking, books as a format make no sense. This is such a silly assertion. Books have been one of the most effective ways for an informed author to get large, complex topics and rich experiences into a another persons head literally since the Roman Empire. Even in today's world where we have an infinite number of other formats and media to choose from, millions of people still prefer and learn from books.…

>> “conventional tech publishers make no sense economically” [...] “It is possible to make decent money from writing technical books if you self publish and build an audience yourself.“

Do you have an example of an author doing this? (Meaning all they do is self-publish books and have disclosed financials.)

Re: How to write a programming book

#60

Post by clarry »

munificent wrote: post #47
clarry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd find out that there is maybe a few thousand people world-wide who are genuinely interested in putting advanced computer science to use. Nah, there are lots of people writing big complex programs with big complex architecture. Architecting programs isn't an "advanced compsci topic", but there are lots and lots of books that don't really talk much about it. Instead they show you how to use your programming lang…

If you haven't read them yet, Design Patterns, The Pragmatic Programmer, and Code Complete, will all help you.

I've glanced at design patterns, but like most programming books, it bored me to death.

To me it reads like "now that you know how to hold this clumsy 90s OOP hammer, here's how to swing it". That's a far cry from architecting systems, and not a particularly motivating read for someone who's really not into that flavor of OOP (or much OOP at all).

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