
Ask HN: I started a publishing company. What technical books are missing? - dpods
My name is Dave and I&#x27;m starting a publishing business. I&#x27;ve decided to narrow my focus on what I know...software engineering. I don&#x27;t have a website yet, but I&#x27;m compiling a list topics&#x2F;categories&#x2F;books that I think are missing in the market but I&#x27;d like to hear from you if there&#x27;s a book that you&#x27;d like to see.<p>Some topics I&#x27;ve come up with so far:<p>* Project based books. By the end of the book you will have built a complete application. Things like simple databases, operating systems, compilers&#x2F;interpreters, shells, build your own framework, blockchain.<p>* Career focused books. Making the jump from junior to senior engineer, soft skills, navigating office politics, etc.<p>* Remote working - pros&#x2F;cons of remote working, how to make the transition, etc<p>My plan is to identify compelling writers and programmers who specialize in these areas and work with them to publish books on these topics. I&#x27;d love to get any feedback on other topics you&#x27;d like to read about.<p>Thanks!
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tucaz
To me, nowadays, the hardest part of learning a new technology or language is
not the “thing” itself but the environment around it.

Make content about environments.

Example: I want to start doing Ruby. There are probably 49 ways to setup a
decent working environment and hundreds of people putting a lot of tools
together to get it started. They all conflict with each other and almost none
are clear. Any material that can explain environments in a way that make sense
and help you get started as efficient and completely as possible is gold.

This is true for all platforms today.

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adamnemecek
Problem with this is that this type of information gets old very fast.

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usgroup
IMO , focus on the project based books. I think this next decade will only see
more self educated and meritocratically qualified folks who actively seek out
accessible material akin in approach to how they learnt to programme.

IMO, focus on where the industry is going:

1\. Cloud infra

2\. ML.

3\. SPAs

4\. IoT

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potta_coffee
I second this. I'm self-educated, do a lot of freelance work and end up
working on a huge variety of projects. While I feel like I've got a pretty
good handle on languages and general programming, sometimes it's really
difficult to find good quality information on the specifics of how to
implement project x on platform y.

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diehunde
I always have trouble finding books that describe the "internals" of some
technologies I want to learn in a decent and technical way. Some O'reilly
books do a good job when they work with the actual people that invented the
tools but there are many more out there that don't have good books on that.

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dpods
I would agree with this. I have a much better understand of how a database
works after doing a small side project trying to implement one. I can imagine
it would be helpful for other technologies as well such a docker, react,
redis, etc.

Thanks for the input!

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cocksure
There's no satisfactory book on how to read substantial code. The result is
that everyone is a writer and no one is a reader. Can you imagine a situation
where almost anyone can write literary novels, but very few can read them?

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dpods
I've heard this a few other times in the past actually. Are you talking about
strategies for getting familiar with a new code base? Or more general like
debugging or code reviews?

Do you have examples of books on this topic that you're not satisfied with?

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happppy
Good Project based books especially for topics like AI, scaling, architecture,
hacking and other I can't think of right now are so scarce.

