
Show HN: Hackershelf. Community curated collection of legally free books - okal
http://hackershelf.com
======
DanielBMarkham
Shameless relevant plug: here's the site I set up for community curated
startup books that are not free: <http://hn-books.com>

Features include searching for books by the problem you are trying to solve,
one-stop cross-searching of all the hacker sites so you can review what other
hackers say about the book, and free startup tools like a countdown clock for
your startup's runway.

About the time I did my site there were a bunch more book sites created. If I
had the list I'd be happy to post those as well. Seems like books -- both free
and paid -- are always in demand with this community. I think the key feature
here in all of these sites is "community curated." I find reading what other
hackers say an irreplaceable aspect of selecting which books to read. (My list
was generated by spending a couple of days on Google searching HN and reddit
finding the best-of-the-best books for hackers)

~~~
subnetvj
You have a pretty diverse collection of books there! Do you update the site
regularly?

I would suggest that you explicitly name the site as hacker-books or something
like that. For people who don't know about HN, would be able relate to the
name better.

Also consider adding a list of online resources that are not in published
form. There are a ton of that out there, would make it even more diverse.

Overall, thanks for your effort.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
This is a best-of-the-best collection, so I only anticipate adding 5-7 books
per year. Maybe not that many. I shoot for books that I know will be classics
20 years from now.

Great idea about the name and the online resources. Thanks! I tried adding
tools for a while. There are a lot of possibilities with a site like this. My
plan is just to take it slowly. Since it's a classics thing, there's no hurry.

------
okal
Update

Sorry for the delayed response. Today of all days, there's been a blackout in
my neighbourhood, an all-too-frequent occurence, sadly. The lights just came
back on, so I'm pulling an all-nighter for the urgent stuff. The response has
been nothing short of overwhelming, and I'm looking forward to start iterating
based on your input. I'm truly grateful.

Some pretty embarrassing bugs have shown up that I didn't notice in
production. I want to start working on those tonight.

As for the feature suggestions, some recurring themes seem to be

1\. A search function. I might implement a rudimentary search anytime from
today after I squash the bugs. The sorting might present an issue, but I'm
looking forward to working on it. For now, this should work
hackershelf.com/topic/<topic>/ e.g. <http://hackershelf.com/topic/ruby/>.
Don't forget the trailing slash for now.

2\. Alternative links. This was actually in the initial version, but I wasn't
happy with how I implemented it. Perhaps a free-form notes box will do the
trick. Any suggestions?

3\. RSS feeds.

Also, any thoughts for a forum where the community can give suggestions in
terms of features and bugs would be helpful. I shall be posting updates on my
tumblr for now (<http://journal.okal.me/tagged/hackershelf>) under the tag
"hackershelf" for the foreseeable future, when this story inevitably falls off
the front page, so you might want to check that

------
silentbicycle
How about research papers, dissertations, and so on? Many are far more
informative than when the authors pad the same content to book length.

Survey papers are particularly useful. Exploring their bibliographies is one
of the fastest ways to get up to speed on a particular issue.

~~~
okal
That sounds like a good idea. I need to limit the scope for now since I'm
working alone, but I'll keep it in mind for future features.

------
robdodson
This is totally awesome! Here is some constructive feedback:

It took me 3 visits to the site to figure out how to add something to my
shelf. The little pin would probably be better served if it were below the
short description next to the 'Book Profile' and 'Book Website' links on the
browse page. Though since adding a book is really the primary action you want
your user to take I'd say make it a really obvious button that goes underneath
the image of the book cover.

Also once I've clicked on a book to learn more about it, there's no little pin
icon on the in-depth description page. Again I'd suggest making it really
prominent and obvious. I went back and forth between browse and the
description page several times looking for it. I need the brain dead 'Add this
thing' button. Your pages are minimal, which is great, because it means that
you can make that button obvious very easily. I think there was a good HN
article a while back about making the most important item on the page obvious.
IMO adding something to my shelf is the most important user action because
after I've added just one book I now feel like I have a bit of a virtual stake
in that profile I just created and I will definitely come back to build my
collection :)

Great idea! Thanks for creating it

P.S. Also just noticed that the hacker shelf logo and title text does not link
anywhere. I'd suggest that take the user home.

~~~
okal
Thank you!

Someone else pointed out the issue with the nondescript pins. I'll find a way
to make it more prominent.

I hadn't realized how frustrating it would be until I had to move back to the
'browse' page to add a book from its profile. That should be an easy fix.
Expect an update within the week.

I fixed the logo so it points to the main page, so that should be okay now.

I'm glad you like it. I appreciate the feedback :)

------
austintaylor
Showing what formats the book is available in would be really helpful. Some of
these are not free for download, but only to read online.

Licensing info might be useful as well. Some of these are free to read but not
to distribute.

~~~
okal
Seems like a lot of people want this. I'll work on it as soon as I can.
Licensing info is also a priority. Thank you.

------
jilebedev
Visual nitpick - the tags are very distracting. When I scroll through a page,
I want it to be static so my eyes can follow what I'm doing. Things popping in
and out of existence really jars me. The tags' color doesn't seem to mesh well
with the rest of the site either.

Other than that - great idea. Best of luck!

~~~
okal
Yeah, the tags do seem a little disconcerting when scrolling. I felt like they
made the site seem a little too busy if they are constantly on display, but I
thought they'd be useful for jumping to interesting topics from the front
page, like ptn suggested below. I'll figure out a better way to present them.
Thanks!

------
kjetil
Nice site, but it seems of the books aren't really free. Code complete and
Programming pearls come to mind.

~~~
davidjhall
I came back here to say this as well. It doesn't look like there's moderation
except by the community ... and if the community doesn't realize that the site
is for free books and is just upvoting books they like, then it's not really
free books. <http://hackershelf.com/book/45/code-complete/>

~~~
readme
Perhaps the solution would be to simply include a "free []" checkbox in the
post book form. That way those who want free books can just select a filter.

~~~
archgoon
Which also ceases to make the site a community around free books.

------
brd
A nice feature would be the inclusion of essays. I think they should be
treated as second class citizens on your site but it could add significant
value for people browsing by tags.

Awesome project by the way, will definitely be using this.

~~~
okal
Great idea! I'll work on that once I've ironed out the kinks in the system.
Thank you.

------
aoe
Design looks pretty good. Is there any reason to require signup to submit a
book? Maybe you can just add a captcha for non-logged in users?

~~~
okal
That sounds like a good idea. The signup is meant to keep away people who
might submit books that don't fit the guidelines. I was also thinking of
implementing a points system for users down the line, based on submission
quality. But I'll definitely look into captchas as an alternative. Thank you
:)

------
kenshi
Nice project.

Feature Request: You need a way to let people specify an image from a URL, not
just upload one from local storage.

~~~
okal
That would be useful. Thanks for the suggestion :)

------
lpolovets
Nice idea. Two things:

1) How are points assigned? I don't see any place to upvote/downvote, but I
see that certain books have points while others do not.

2) There should be a way to sort by points.

Edit: Also, maybe a tagline at the top? (e.g. "Community curated collection of
legally free books.") The 'about' page discusses the purpose of the site, but
if I happened to just stumble upon the site, it wouldn't be clear how this is
different from other sites that do not concern themselves with legality...
_especially_ since you have 'hacker' in the title ;)

~~~
okal
Hi. To answer the first question, there's no explicit voting option. A book
gains points everytime it's added to someone's shelf. So, no downvotes either.

As for sorting by points, I was hoping to add that when I implement search.

I agree, I should probably make the "legally" more explicit :) It's already in
the title though.

~~~
lpolovets
Do you mean "legally" is in the title of web page, or of the HackerNews post?
I see it on HN, but not on the website.

Btw, I'd like to echo someone's request for an RSS feed. I'd love to see when
new books are added, and I wouldn't mind if you had ads or affiliate links to
Amazon for hard copies in those updates.

~~~
bullfroge
It's in the window title, but I agree, it should be on the page. In Chrome, my
tabs only show me about 2 words, so I never see that title.

------
arjn
Here is a site that's been around for a while : <http://www.theassayer.org/>

------
dotBen
There are a number of popular private DropBox shares of computer science and
startup ebooks that do the rounds in these tech circles.

 _Yes, we're talking about books that are not legally free_

When I go to a startup's offices or a friend's house I often flick through
their library of tech books and then find myself picking one or two to buy on
my Kindle. I'm sure you do this too.

I find myself doing this with the dropbox share I'm on - I skim through the
pdf of an interesting book and then just buy it on my Kindle.

Ask your work colleagues if they are on any such Dropbox shares, there are a
few of them.

EDIT: I assumed I'd get downvoted for the above, despite being careful with my
wording. Just to be clear: I'm just saying that there are DropBox shares of
this content - that is a fact. And that when I go to startups and read their
books, I often buy them - this is also a fact. And that your colleagues might
already be on these shares - this too is also a fact. That's it.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, those are all factually correct. They're not, however, relevant to a
thread about "legally free tech books".

I didn't down-vote you. But if I posted a comment about Usenet or torrents or
other sources of not-legally-free books I'd expect some downvoting or negative
comments.

------
ryanedick
Great start! Looks like you have some great feedback here as well. This is a
resource I could see myself coming back to often.

One thing I noticed is that if I add a book while in the 'browse' list view, I
am thrown to the top of the page where I am given a notification. If I could
maintain my position on the page that would be ideal, maybe a pop-up
notification that the book was added; or replacing the pin icon with another
graphic for removing the book from the shelf. This way I don't have to scroll
past all the books I have already looked through (not as big of a deal at the
moment, but I could see it becoming an issue as the collection of books
grows).

Also as you add features to the site, an option for browsing books in a 'grid
view' rather than just a list could potentially be useful. Especially as the
collection grows.

Best of luck, looking forward to see the resource this site will become for
the hacker community.

~~~
okal
Looking forward to your patronage :)

I'll work on the scroll, but bear with it for now. There's zero JS on the
frontend right now, except for some analytics code. Adding to your shelf
shouldn't require a whole page load. I'll ajaxify it in stages.

Thanks for the wishes!

~~~
ryanedick
I understand a work in progress, so it doesn't bother me so much, just an
observation that hopefully helps! Agreed, ajax is the way to go, a full reload
is expensive.

------
Dove
This is immensely valuable!

I do have some critiques of the site, though.

\- Why do I need a password and email address to keep a list of free books?
There's no private information here.

\- I'd really, really like to be able to search

\- Failing that, I'd love to see the list all on one long page, organized in
some way -- even if it's just alphabetically.

~~~
arjn
Have a look at the theassayer link I posted. It appears to fulfill much of
your requirements.

~~~
Dove
Why, thanks! There's a surprisingly complete set of hard science curriculum
there, something I'd been wishing for.

------
andrewcooke
seems like you should have <http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html> if you're
posting here ;o)

~~~
okal
Haha. Good point. You could add it if you like ;)

~~~
andrewcooke
i may be being a bit dumb here, but i can't see any way to register...

[edit: also, clicking top left should always lead back to the front page] [and
you shouldn't be displaying "shelves" on "about" to people not logged in] [and
now someone else has registered it anyway]

~~~
morrow
FYI - I just added 'On Lisp', but the registration button is at the top right,
called 'Signup'.

~~~
andrewcooke
(thanks) ok, another small bug - for sufficiently narrow browser windows the
registration links are not shown (just drag your browser window narrower and
you'll see them disappear). you need to float right or similar.

~~~
okal
Thanks for noting that. I'll have to do a little more work on the layout. I
hope it wasn't too frustrating.

------
jonaldomo
I added a book for you. I like the idea and design. I think there should be
another column that stores the location to the book. I think that the homepage
should just be the link to the book's website. Maybe an upload option to add
the pdf or a link to the direct download.

~~~
okal
I'm thinking of adding an "Additional notes" box to the book profile for that
sort of thing. Recent events made me shy away from any sort of hosting, but I
definitely see the value in direct download links. I saw your submission :)
Thanks for trying it out. Hope you'll find it useful.

------
tluyben2
Nice work!

How about download links to PDFs (and other formats if avail)? In my
experience quite often links to external sites are down/changed/weird/unclear
etc; straight downloads would be better imho.

~~~
okal
Glad you like it! Thank you. It seems like that's something people would find
useful, as jonaldomo suggested. I'll work on that as soon as I can. I was also
hoping to drive traffic to the book homepages to support the authors, which
made me a little hesitant to show direct links.

~~~
phalasz
Firstly. Really good idea to list these books.

As for the direct link vs. link to the website... You could have both maybe?

~~~
okal
Thanks you. I'll add that feature in a later deployment, once I work out the
details.

------
thibaut_barrere
Pretty cool! If you'd like I could add your content to
<http://www.hackerbooks.com/> (and link back of course). Let me know!

------
sklipo
Looks interesting, but you've got a contradiction on your signup page: the
email is obligatory (which I personally don't like), but it says optional
inside the text field.

------
arscan
Nice resource. Quick suggestion: took me a minute to figure out how to add
something to my shelf -- you may want to make that pin icon a little more
prominent.

~~~
okal
Also noticed it doesn't show on my phone, since it's triggered by hovering.
Will fix that tonight. Thank you :)

------
prakashk
Nice list.

Are duplicate entries accepted? "Eloquent Javascript" has two entries.

<http://hackershelf.com/book/40/eloquent-javascript/>
<http://hackershelf.com/book/39/eloquent-javascript/>

Perhaps, they are submitted around the same time?

Edit: Now, I notice two entries for "Learn You a Haskell" too which are pretty
far apart in their ids.

~~~
okal
Thanks :) Duplicate entries are not allowed, but I'm still trying to figure
out the best way to handle them. If you come across one, simply flag the last
to be entered so I can manually delete them. SICP also got added a couple of
times.

~~~
minikomi
Auto complete when entering a new title might help as a last reminder to keep
duplicates down

------
alwillis
Good stuff. Just added _Mercurial, the Definitive Guide_ : <http://hgbook.red-
bean.com/>

~~~
alwillis
I should add that _Mercurial, the Definitive Guide_ comes in PDF
([http://code.google.com/p/i18n-zh/downloads/detail?name=hgboo...](http://code.google.com/p/i18n-zh/downloads/detail?name=hgbook-
en-20110317.pdf.gz)) and epub
(<https://bitbucket.org/jan_/hgbook/downloads/hgbook.epub>) versions as well,
which seem more current.

------
joh6nn
looks like you just got your first dupe. you need some way to flag books for
review, so that they can be merged, or deleted if they're spam.

~~~
evoltix
I submitted a dupe and wanted to remove it but couldn't find that option.

~~~
okal
Fixed that. Should be OK now. EDIT: Deletion, that is. I'm managing duplicates
manually.

------
MHBerryman
Bonus points for using the glider logo, will definitely be checking this out
in more depth when I get a chance!

------
theSuda
This is great. I am already loving it. Please add more resource types like
Essays, Papers etc. One suggestion: After I click the Add to shelf button,
page reloads and does not return to the position/book I was looking at. Each
time I have to scroll down again to shelve the next book.

Thanks for the efforts :)

------
vitorbal
You should set DEBUG to false in your Django settings file for production. I
got a 404 from [1] (probably you are tweaking some stuff?) and can see all
your URL patterns...

[1]: <http://www.hackershelf.com/login/guidelines.htm>

~~~
okal
Hey. Yeah, was still doing some tweaks, but I've fixed it now. Thank you!

------
kjhughes
Looks good overall.

Nit: On the about page,

<http://hackershelf.com/about.html>

when not logged in, clicking on the "shelf" button tries to go to

<http://hackershelf.com/shelf/>

but crashes with TypeError

"int() argument must be a string or a number, not 'AnonymousUser'"

~~~
okal
Hadn't noticed that, thanks. Will fix it as soon as I can get to a computer.
I'm in a bus right now.

~~~
vilgax
Just noticed that you are using Python 2.7.1. Is that intentional or you just
didn't update that?

~~~
okal
It's the default supplied by my host for my particular configuration.

------
ThomPete
Now all you need to do is make a reader app for those books and track how far
people are, what favorite quotes they have highlighted and allow them to ask
questions about specific parts in the book and you would have a nice little
possible business going there :)

------
icarus127
I would also add an option to link directly to the book as well as the book
homepage. Occasionally books are legally available from the authors but not
directly available on the book's website. (For example, 'The Haskell Road to
Maths' which I just added.)

------
zecho
I added a couple of books. Seems like this could be a useful resource. A
couple of feature requests: Search and ratings.

Maybe ratings are what "points" are, but I'm not sure exactly what points
means in the context of this site. Care to elaborate?

~~~
diab0lic
Search would be great, as its going to be a pain when the size of the list
grows to beyond a few books.

Tagging would be nice too.

~~~
okal
Already implemented tagging. Still trying to figure out a good way to roll it
out. But if you go to hackershelf.com/book/(book_id)/edit/ you can add tags to
your heart's content :) That should work for now.

------
Kaizyn
I am noticing that duplicates appear in the book listing(s) as well as books
without all the proper metadata such as title and author. There should be an
option to let people flag both types of problems with the books.

------
apricot13
would love the ability to subscribe via RSS!

~~~
okal
So would i :) _Added to Tracker_

------
dmoo
Some good ones as part of the Bruce Perens open series to add from here

[http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=1355...](http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=135563)

------
sateesh
Good Job. I noticed the book 'Learning Python' is listed there. But it is not
available for free download. Should one flag such books (i.e. ones that are
not available legally free) for abuse ?

------
bergie
Open Advice (<http://open-advice.org/>) should fit nicely there: what we
would've wanted to know when we started contributing to Open Source

~~~
okal
Looks like an awesome resource. Go ahead and add it :)

~~~
morrow
Okal, I added that resource, though you may want to consider truncating the
author listing like you are doing with the description on the index page (this
book had ~40 authors).

Great job on the site, and thanks for making it - I've already added several
books to my shelf.

------
hackNightly
Fantastic, thank you very much for this resource. As a programming book
junkie, you have truly made my day by providing this. I signed up, and hope
the list continues to grow. Great work.

~~~
okal
Glad you found it useful :)

------
monkeyfacebag
FYI, the word 'subtitle' is misspelled on the submission form. I submitted
Introduction to Information Retrieval; can't believe it wasn't already on
there!

------
Xyzodiac
This is a fantastic resource. I've seen many implementations of a
programming/hacker library but the user submission and library support is a
huge plus!

------
prophetjohn
This is nice, but did you intentionally disabling touch gestures? Swipe-to-go-
back is not working with this page on OS X in Chrome.

------
muyuu
Must have mistyped the password because now I can't log in.

Where is the password recovery form?

Not that I think there should be need for any password at all.

~~~
okal
Sorry about that. Do you have an email address in your profile? I could hack
up a quick password recovery system to let you back in. The accounts are only
necessary if you want a shelf of your own. If you're simply lurking - which is
perfectly OK - you can browse everything but you won't get the full
experience.

~~~
muyuu
Well... 1 no password confirmation, 2 no way of seeing it as I type it, 3
obviously not going to use a password I already use. Chances were high this
would happen.

My username is the same as here though. Doesn't let me reuse the email
address.

I'd rather have openID, or just let the user create password-less accounts.
Who'd want to vandalise my account?

Also, if you are going to ask me for my email (supposedly for password
recovery, a feature that doesn't exist at least for now) then you might as
well not force me to come up with a user name and let me use the email address
instead.

Also, why do I have to mouse-over to see the tags? tags that are terribly
inconsistent, by the way. Since I can't log in I don't see if any user can
vote on tags, or modify them, or just set tags for his own submissions. I
suspect it's the latter and they're not curated. I mean, there are only a
bunch of pages worth of books and they're already inconsistent enough to be
basically useless as a means of categorisation. You should probably edit them
to give the site an initial push.

Every little inconvenience exponentially increases the chances of the user not
coming a 2nd time.

I like the concept, but at its current state this site makes me want to spider
the hell out of it and do my file management locally.

~~~
okal
I've sent you the recovery link, if you're still interested. Again, sorry for
the frustration.

------
lurker17
In Browse, you need many more books per page, with much smaller table cells
per each, so that the user can _browse_.

~~~
okal
Good point. Someone also suggested a grid view. I'll be looking at both
suggestions over the coming weeks. Thank you!

------
SeanDav
Nice collection. Just noticed a small spelling mistake: The blurb on "Free
Range VHDL" has got "fro" instead of "for".

------
danso
Minor nitpick: The logo should link to the homepage. It's natural for us to
click there :)

Otherwise, great work!

------
neilparikh
One thing I noticed was that some books were shown twice on the list.
Otherwise, great job!

~~~
ya3r
I would like to inform the creator, about a miss-spelling in Jeremy Ashkenas'
name, here: <[http://hackershelf.com/book/77/the-little-book-on-
coffescrip...](http://hackershelf.com/book/77/the-little-book-on-
coffescript/>);

It also would be really nice, if it had wiki capabilities. I mean for editing
such things.

~~~
okal
I'm not sure how good an idea it would be to let everyone edit things, but we
should probably start off that way and see how it goes. I'll enable that on my
next push. Thanks.

------
adeelk
Why only free books? Seems like an arbitrary constraint.

~~~
adimitrov
Because paid for books are already on amazon or Barnes & Noble, or what have
you, and their respective computer science/programming sections — including an
indication of how popular the book is, and often also reviews by customers.

I like that this is only for free books, since, as a poor grad student, I can
actually do more than just window-shopping.

------
jacobian
okal, please turn DEBUG off. It exposes a number of things you don't want the
public to be reading.

~~~
okal
Wanted to launch over the weekend, but a friend of mine managed to convince me
to do it today. Thanks. Still in the bus home, but it'll be fixed in about an
hour.

------
buckwild
What a great idea! Thanks!

------
theon144
No search function?

------
funthree
Here is an amazon wishlist I keep of good books that I have or want. Of course
these aren't all free, though

<http://amzn.com/w/TF6QJAIBPPFU>

Edit: Why would this get downvoted, exactly?

~~~
roel_v
Because it's orthogonal to the conversation.

1\. the site is only about free books.

2\. nobody cares about what books you have or want. The site is about free
books that appeal to hackers.

3\. do you really expect somebody to trawl your amazon list? If there are free
books on there that would be of interest to the target audience, upload them.

~~~
funthree
The list is pretty much on topic. It's books that appeal to hackers really
since I made it from talking to people in #startups on IRC, the only
difference is that, yeah they are real books that cost a few dollars to own.

Also it's more than introductions to various programming languages, there are
more advanced concepts on the list that appeal to hackers.

Its 1 page of 17 books.

~~~
roel_v
Whatever, you asked why you were downvoted, I just told you (for the record I
didn't downvote you, I don't care).

