Edw519 wrote a book compiling his best HN Comments | Hacker News Reader

Edw519 wrote a book compiling his best HN Comments

edweissman.com

184 pointszyfo49 comments

Original author here.

This was a little side project to have some fun and maybe spread a little value.

I frantically threw this together over the weekend to be ready for the traffic Marc Cenedella (CEO of TheLadders.com) promised me today. His posts:

http://twitter.com/cenedella/status/57759591789887489#

and

http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-resum...

Thank you, Marc.

As many of you know, I spend most of my time writing software and generally resist spending time writing other stuff (even though I always find time to say something here). So in typical hacker fashion, I "launched" what I had with the intention of accepting feedback and iterating. You guys have always been really good at that.

I originally planned on a Kindle ebook, but Scribd was just so much easier for me. I didn't realize that others had problems viewing or purchasing. If you're outside the U.S. or have any other problems reading the sample, just email me and I'll send you a free pdf.

All of your feedback is greatly appreciated. I'll keep updating the content as I go and will gladly accept help with typesetting or distributing. I plan to follow up with some of you during one of my breaks today.

If you buy the book and don't like it, I will buy you a cup of coffee the next time we are together. If you buy it and do like it, make that a beer.

Great idea. I've looked into it and there are little gems down there.

@edw519: send me an original editable format of the book and i'll typeset it for you.

james@imaj.es

edw, do this and give this guy some cut. The scribd version is awful (at least on my screen: http://i.min.us/iksKDk.png

I just bought the book, but would like a readability upgrade :D

Yes, this provides value. Thanks, edw519!

Glad you put in the work to organize your comments. I've only caught a tiny slice of your input, but it's clear you really love what you do.

I hope you reconsider your ideas on code sharing, it's amazing how much one can learn on blogs and github. I started doing a little part time web programming in 2009 after a decade of strictly c++ simulation and analysis and would be lost without experienced folks (many teenagers) sharing their insights on practical web development.

I just bought the book, but really dislike the formatting. Some suggestions:

- use portrait instead of landscape format

- use typical US Letter (8.5 x 11) or A4 size.

- typeset with nice fonts

- remove the "customize", "free license", and advertising for your conversion software

I'd love an upgrade if you get around to doing this.

Thanks,

I'd like to typeset the document for you. I'm planning on printing this out for a paperback myself and will be doing it anyways.

If you can send me an editable document (ajai@ajaimk.com - I've already bought a copy too on scribd), that would make it a lot easier. I'm a college student who ran the layout and design department for a magazine, so I have some experience in this.

Also, find it amusing that 1 of the first questions in this book was a comment for a question I had asked on HN ;-)

Hate to be the bearer of bad news--perhaps somewhat mitigated by the lack of hardcopies--but it's 'foreword' and not 'forward'.

That is, unless this is either some technolingo or inside joke that I'm not privy to.

"I never publish my code. Ever. Users get to give me feedback, but I don't care what other programmers think. Sure, I learn from them, but never in the context of reviewing the code I wrote. I learn from the code of others and apply those lessons to my own work."

You can, of course, do whatever you want but this seems awfully selfish... Essentially saying that you will take whatever others (foolishly?) give in open source, blog posts, etc., etc., but never give back. Am I reading this correctly?

Am I reading this correctly?

No.

1. Almost everything I ever wrote is proprietary. I couldn't legally share it if I wanted to.

2. I have never taken anyone else's code. In fact, I have rarely even ever read anyone else's code. To me, someone else's source code might as well be object code. "learning from them" means getting feedback without getting code. Others make suggestions. I write my code.

3. I prefer these analogies: You can eat in my dining room without going into my kitchen. You can enjoy my wardrobe without watching me get dressed. You can watch the movie or read the book without watching either being made. And you can provide feedback about any of them that can be accepted and used.

My source code is private. My customer list is private. My address book is private. My current location is private. My personal schedule is private. You can, of course, share whatever private information you want, but calling my choices "awfully selfish" is myopic and misinformed.

Thanks for that honest answer. You're right, calling your choices "awfully selfish" is perhaps going a bit too far.

>I have never taken anyone else's code.

This is REALLY hard to believe. Also, god bless the person who thought me to use other people's code.

I think I'd really enjoy the read.

It would have been a bit nicer if the great comments were accompanied by some good design/typesetting (generate latex?) and an alternative format (epub).

There are a few solutions based on princeXML that can take easily generatable HTML+CSS and convert it to pdf (example: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom ).

While the Prince license might not be the cheapest, there also is a webservice that does the conversion (http://docraptor.com/tour)

Another vote for EPUB. It has so many advantages to PDF for screen reading... for example, automatic reflowing to the size of the window.

docraptor.com looks like a paid version of wkhtmltopdf which is free

docraptor.com uses princexml which theoretically could not only do HTML, but any XML based format. Prince does however include a default style sheet for XHTML and HTML seems to be the only input that docraptor accepts. Not sure what happens if you throw non XML conform HTML on Prince.

You can also use eBookBurn (http://ebookburn.com/)

disclaimer: that site is run by my startup

Ed is one of the most prolific and valuable members of the HN community. That being said, I'd love for andrewwarner to do a Mixergy interview. Ed is not the typical Mixergy success though but we could all learn from his b2b success.

Thank you, wallflower.

A few years ago, I did a Mixergy interview along with rms about Hacker News:

http://blog.mixergy.com/why-communities/

Andrew, if you're reading this, I would love to do another, not about my past projects, but about my next one. Stay tuned...

we could all learn from his b2b success

Hmmm, sounds like an idea for another ebook....

Yup. I'm reading this. Let's talk privately about how we could set it up. http://mixergy.com/contact

He should do Amazon Kindle self-publishing and write about the sales numbers later.

I'm not a US citizen and all I see is obfuscated content reminiscent of rot-13. Am I being slow this morning?

Try disabling noscript / enable javascript. I had the same problem

I tried to read this but the Scribd reader hung up on me after a few pages and all I got to see were blank pages (I'm using FF4). Would it be possible to compile some of the comments in a "Sample.pdf" file and directly link to that instead?

I just saw this in his profile yesterday, intend to buy.

EDIT: Apparently I need to be a US citizen. I'll find some other way to send him a donation.

I just purchased the book and it was totally worth the $2.56. Which, BTW, is a nice price. :-)

Comment #49 is a piece of advice that will pay for the book many times over, no matter what you do for a living.

Congrats Ed! Good luck publishing!

I have a similar project, so I'd like to know how you decided which comments to pick, how you put them together, etc.

I'm working with the epub format right now. Not sure if I made the right choice or not, but it seemed like the best technical option to hit the most platforms. Never occurred to me to use Scribd.

Thanks, Daniel.

My app gives 5 sort options

- by descending number of words, because short comments don't make good book entries

- by descending points, to take advantage of the feedback you guys already gave me

- by descending date, to grab the more applicable comments

- by descending weight, my own changeable formula, attempting to put the best stuff up front

- in output sequence, to get a feel for how the final product will flow

I say a little more about this in the foreword.

I also hope to clean up the app and make it available if anyone else wants to give it a try.

I probably would have bought it for that price but it says United States only. Perhaps Gumroad or Hawtcakes would work? Or the Kindle store? (I heard you can instantly convert files to Kindle format by mailing them to youramazonaccount@kindle.com)

Another site that I used to visit regularly, for about 7 or 8 years, had a poster who kept his own text-file of all the great posts he'd read over the years. Occassionally he would tease us by posting extracts (of course, everybody wanted to know how many of their comments made the cut) occassionally. But I always thought the file itself was probably worth actual money. And I keep forgetting to make a similar effort for other online communities (HN for instance. But you'd be here all day catching all the great coments on HN).

Jason Gilmore (@wjgilmore) has an interesting article on publishing a book using DocBook, and git for version control. http://www.wjgilmore.com/blog/entry/why_i_published_easy_php...

Also, I just bought Ed's book ... Really great commentary in there. Somewhat sad I've only been a member of the HN community for such a short time.

Thanks Ed! How did you make the ebook? I've been looking for a good app to convert blog feeds to books, but haven't found anything that just works.

If you send me an email I will be happy to put it up for sale on my new store (for free of course).

You might also want to try Sahil's http://gumroad.com.

How the book was made is discussed in the 'forward'--which is viewable in the preview.

Thanks, that's an interesting read too!

Would be really nice to have this book on some different store, as you can't buy it from Scribd if you're not in USA. :(

Just to confirm, you cannot purchase this from the United Kingdom either at this time.

This will sit nicely next to my Encyclopedia Weaselicus, available now for the low, low price of $3.59.

Stuff like this should be made a compulsive reading for hackers.

This solves a very basic problem with hacker-related knowledge - you don't know what to search until you know what to search!

And books like Ed's solve this by compiling it all in one place. Someone here did one for pg's essays and other articles and the result was a 12+MB file good to last you a few days if you're at it.

Great idea and I would love to buy it, but I'm not a US citizen :(

bought. read. Worth every penny 256 times.

About time :)

Link to the actual book: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52729281/The-Best-Of-edw519

I really like this idea and will buy the book. However, it would be nice if the comments were time-stamped, as not all advice is timeless.

Anyone know of any other forum-comments-turned-book examples?

EDIT: I would buy it if I didn't have to be a US citizen to buy a digital book in scribd. Why is this a problem for a book like this?

Good find. I believe Amazon allows you to sell ebooks internationally, I could be wrong though.

It does.

David Pogue crowd-sourced a book from Twitter. http://www.amazon.com/World-According-Twitter-David-Pogue/dp...

perhaps the author can offer the ebook on their site/blog with a paypal payment for the PDF. Living in the UK and cannot purchase this at the mo.

Not quite a book, but most of the (unpublished) essays I write start out as simple forum posts.

I really like this idea and will buy the book. However, it would be nice if the comments were time-stamped, as not all advice is timeless.

I originally planned to provide a link to the original but decided to keep it simple.

Do you mean a link or the original date?

[EDIT: Original date done in next release. Thank you, zyfo.]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com