Nate, co-author here.

Sorry you had a bad experience with our book. We've definitely made some improvements to the early chapters in the last few months (the book has been updated over 30 times and it's over 600 pages long).

We did use leanpub in the beginning and we did switch to gumroad. But the switch was because gumroad was a better fit for us, not to hide negative reviews. For instance, you can still read tons of reviews of our book on Amazon.

I'd love to hear more of your ideas on how we can make the early chapters better. Also, I'd like to give you a refund since you're not happy with the book. Email me at us@fullstack.io and I'd love to chat.