I wrote a book about Everyday Go | Hacker News Reader

I wrote a book about Everyday Go

blog.alexellis.io

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$79 for a 180 page PDF… is steep like I'm back in college.

Kernighan's "The Go Programming Language" is only $40

The authors advice seems to realize this and has a kind of let them eat cake attitude right below the pricing.

> Why not put it on your training objectives and expense it

That's not a thing everyone can do

This is definitely offputting:

> If you're unhappy with the price, then please feel free to take 6 years to learn, test out, write-up and maintain everything contained in the 100+ pages of my new eBook.

Or maybe I'll just buy a cheaper book from someone else?

Yep that line would make me not buy this. I don’t care for that kind of sneering language.

Hmm not a bad idea. or may somebody could just maybe you know, pay the $100, rehash it and sell the summary/rehash of the book for $20? Even different translations of it.

On a more general note, I wonder if a group effort/initiative exists to "open source" the rewrite of contents of these unbeleivably expensive text books? While content can be copyrighted, the re-explained content versions of these cannot be right?

It looks like 180 pages is with ePub formatting:

> The ePub has 180+ pages, the PDF has 100 A4 pages.

Depends on how good it is ultimately. I've read a _lot_ of programming books. Some were obvious, some were good, and some elevated me in a way I am unsure I would have achieved on my own. Given the tremendous salary opportunities in the field, its tough for a book price to be too high, if its good. And sometimes, reading a few bad ones is the only way to find the good ones.

I think a fair benchmark is https://haskellbook.com/.

It's $60 and the absolute most I'll consider and have spent on a book of this nature, outside of botique ancient stuff....and is really well written as well as has a pretty ambitious goal (teach Haskell and programming more generally from the ground up).

I think that’s a fair benchmark, too. It’s a well-written book that starts from first principles — something I don’t see often in books. While I don’t use Haskell everyday, the things I’ve learned from that book influence how I write code every day.

This keeps being resubmitted, often by the author

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=alexellis.io

I follow him on twitter. Very pushy about his "things".

I really like k8sup and openfaas and can't imagine the pressure to make a living off OSS, so I don't blame him.

> If you're unhappy with the price, then please feel free to take 6 years to learn, test out, write-up and maintain everything contained in the 100+ pages of my new eBook.

This is a great sales pitch.

I guess tastes differ, but I personally find the passive-aggressive tone pretty off-putting. Especially, when looking at the table of contents and sample pages, the 100p material seems to be more or less on par with Effective Go or other more practice-oriented books on Go.

There is nothing wrong with that - I am sure there are good lessons in there - but the whole car-salesman vibe the author conjures up works counter-productively (at least, to me).

It's probably equally true for Effective Go.

In general, buying a book teaching you about a topic is often going to be much cheaper than acquiring all the relevant experience on your own through trial and error.

by the way as a designer i love this

What is "this"? The artwork in the book? The title in HN? The design of the blog post?

I'd love to know this :D

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