
Ask HN: Best book structure - selmat
What is the best book structure you have ever read?<p>sidenote: we are talking about technical books.
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yesenadam
Well, it's hard to think of anything _radically_ unique. But some memorable
things that come to mind:

\- the way Graham, Knuth & Patashnik's _Concrete Mathematics_ has the
students' comments, silly or enlightening, in the margins. Its also very well
designed and put together.

\- I absolutely love the design of Sedgewick & Wayne's _Algorithms_ (4th ed.)
The fonts, colour palette, diagrams illustrating algorithms etc, are all
miraculously awesome. The next algorithms book I looked at seemed so tedious
and incompetent I wanted to complain.

\- I love raganwald's _JavaScript Allongé_ apart from the pictures. But there
are pictures throughout of coffee, coffee machines, coffee bushes etc with
coffee-related captions, all totally unrelated to the text, that somehow work,
like a breath of fresh air through the book.

\- Needham's _Visual Complex Analysis_ is a marvel of clarity in word and
picture.

\- _Eloquent Javascript_ (I read the online version[0]) is impressively well-
designed. A good mix of covering-the-basics and projects. A clean, simple and
beautiful form.

[0] [http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)

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gvajravelu
The book structure depends on your goals for the reader.

Books that are for teaching a skill to a beginner generally follow a project
based approach. You start with a basic concept and have the reader build a
project. Then you go on to a more advanced topic and have the reader build a
more advanced project. It would be great if each project built upon the
previous ones. I think that is one reason why Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails
Tutorial is so popular:
[https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book).

Then there are reference books. These are for experienced people to go back
and relearn a concept they forgot. These books are great when organized with a
clear table of contents for easily looking up topics. They don't need
elaborate projects, but they do need examples to demonstrate the application
of the concept. Something like the C++ reference would fall into this
category:
[http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/](http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/).

Hope that helps. Good luck!

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weaksauce
Eloquent ruby was one of my favorite technical books to read. Short and
concise(10-20 pages each) topic chapters with motivation opening, explanation
of the subject and ending with a real world example from rails or ruby or some
other opensource library.

The writing and clarity of explanation is the top quality I look for in
technical writing though.

Edit... Looking at your past submission I would go with project based layout
that focuses on one topic at a time but touches on the other topics as needed.
With questions at the end of each chapter and project ideas / part lists for
home exploration. Sounds like a fun project, good luck!

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z1mm32m4n
I’m a huge fan of _Practical Typography_ by Matthew Butterick.

\- If you only read it linearly it gives you the most crucial points early up
front.

\- It does an excellent job of linking between and to relevant sections. The
most natural way to read the book is to read it _non-linearly_.

\- It balances depth and brevity.

[https://practicaltypography.com](https://practicaltypography.com)

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itamarst
It's very dependent on what you're trying to explain. There's no one right
answer. Do you have a specific goal in mind?

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rcavezza
POODR (Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby) by Sandi Metz is my favorite.
Each idea in every chapter is backed up by a very specific example of
refactoring. I can't really put a description on the type of structure, but I
love the book structure.

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gallerdude
Jon Duckett: HTML/CSS

It's really beautiful, and a crazy visual way to learn how to design web
pages. And it ramps up slowly and nicely enough for you to fully understand
everything.

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brudgers
GNU Emacs Manual...the printed version. Which reminds me to say that print is
a book structure.

