Hacker News Reader

Comment by KineticLensman | Hacker News Reader

I think the article is really general advice about (tech) writing, not about writing a programming book. There is very little if anything specific to programming itself, e.g. e.g. the types of code fragments you should use as examples.

Also, apart from the line:

> You can always ask feedback from people you trust to gain confidence

there is no mention of getting someone to proofread or even copy edit the book. This would also seem really important for a programming book - e.g. to check that the examples work away from the author's dev environment.

View on HN

>there is no mention of getting someone to proofread or even copy edit the book. This would also seem really important for a programming book - e.g. to check that the examples work away from the author's dev environment.

You're actually talking two different things.

Someone needs to proofread/copyedit the book. Full stop. And, unless you have a partner or particularly close friend who will/can do a careful edit for you for a case of beer and a pizza, you're going to have to pay someone.

For a programming book (or other types of technical books), you probably need a technical reviewer. If it's just a sanity check for technical accuracy, colleagues etc. can probably do that. But to work through all the code in a book, again, someone will probably have to get paid.

This is a much more useful comment than the OP.

Books need review - not just a few comments on the general concept, but line by line proofreading of the English, and fact checking of every single technical statement.

This is fundamental to the process. It's not an aspiration, it's part of the writing process - because often you'll be writing content while other content is being reviewed, and feedback from both can influence the rest.

Indeed, there's no remark about it because I wanted to split the act of writing from the publishing of the book. The sentence on asking feedback was geared towards checking the ideas, having an overview of what you've written by someone else (which is not the same than proofreading).

All what you mention as missing, is part of my current ongoing process, and I still haven't learned nor tested enough as to summarize it.

Fair points.

I hope the process goes well! Doing what you are doing is really difficult and I have lots of respect for those who try!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com