
Show HN: 14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers – New Book - zenorocha
https://14habits.com/
======
zenorocha
Hello HN friends!

I never thought I'd say this, but - yes - I just published a book!

14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers is now available for everyone.

It's everything I know about productivity, tech career, and side projects into
one package. I spent 3 months writing this, 1 month working on the launch, and
10+ years living these ideas.

To be honest, I never wanted to write a book, but I believe that being a
developer is more than knowing the hottest tools.

You can learn the most popular frameworks, use the best programming languages,
and work at the biggest tech companies, but if you cultivate bad habits, it
will be hard for you to become a top developer.

Because of that, I decided to reach out to the best developers I know and ask
them tips on how to be more productive.

I went after tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Powerful
startups such as Spotify, GoDaddy, and Shopify. All the way to established
organizations such as Citibank and The New York Times.

This book is a collection of valuable learnings not only from me but from
experienced programmers from all over the world.

I hope you like it :)

Let me know if you have any questions! I'm here to answer every single one of
them.

~~~
pinfisher
I appreciate you putting up the first chapter!

~~~
zenorocha
No worries. I saw some people doing that and putting email walls to get it. I
think this is much better. Just click, download it, and get a sense of it
before making a purchase decision.

~~~
utkarsh_apoorva
The lack of email walls was so refreshing. I expected an ugly form to show up,
and was willing to fill it out. But instead, I was greeted with the actual
download - just like that.

I don't know what the opposite of Cognitive Dissonance is called, but now I
know what it feels like.

~~~
zenorocha
That's so nice to hear!

------
vorpalhex
Thanks for sharing the first chapter!

The graphics are quite rough and too large - the actual amount of text per
page on the PDF is very low. This compounds the feeling of the text itself
feeling very surface level.

> Instead, we should practice JOMO (the joy of missing out), which is mostly
> about being happy and content with what you already know.

Here you introduce a new concept and never mention it again. Instead of paving
a road to drive on in the next few paragraphs, you immediately introduce a
plethora of heavyweight ideas including the practice of saying no and of noise
discrimination.

All of these points are good ones, but because they're passed over so quickly
with no explanation it's going to be hard for someone who isn't familar with
them to unpack them and extract learnings.

~~~
zenorocha
Ohh interesting. Thanks for sharing that feedback @vorpalhex!

------
fouc
I think it would be nice to see a TOC or something similar on the main page. I
found the TOC by looking at the gumroad link and going through the slide show.

Minor nitpick: I feel like the links on all those company icons is unnecessary
(alt text on hover would be fine).

Interestingly taking the first letter of each company leads to the acronym -
GAGMASS.. A bit catchier than FANG :)

~~~
zenorocha
Hey @fouc, thanks for the feedback.

I agree the links on all those company icons is unnecessary. I just put it
over there in case people didn't know the logo.

About the TOC, I believe you might have missed that. It's on the "What's
inside?" section of the site.

GAGMASS - that's funny :P

~~~
fouc
I think once I saw the list of people I assumed I was near the end of the
webpage, and didn't keep looking past it. Perhaps you could move some other
things above that list.

FWIW there's 9 upvotes on my earlier post so maybe that means 8 other people
had the same issue as me, not sure.

------
petr25102018
Disclaimer: I am writing a book on the same topic (nevertheless it will be
quite different from the content perspective).

I don't want to comment much on the book because of ^ but there is something
that I found a little bit off putting for me.

It is the obsession with American big tech (the biggest tech companies and
well known startups). The book suggests that all such companies have it
figured out, that all engineers working there are the most productive and best
in the industry. I personally don't believe it and I am not sure why a
productivity book should be so heavily based around it.

As an example take this question from the book "What's so special about
individuals who create the most used applications in the world?" I really
really just want to answer "Nothing".

Anyways there goes my little rant... Definitely congrats on publishing a book,
it is a struggle!

~~~
zenorocha
Hey @petr25102018, that's a great topic, I'm glad you brought that up.

When I was starting my career, I always looked at those companies as dream
jobs. The amazing offices, the culture, everything was eye-catching.

As I started to get older and more experienced, I noticed that those companies
are not that special. They have issues, problems, and conflicts like any other
company. Don't get me wrong, those companies are still amazing and their
impact is undeniable.

I see this like sports. There are amazing teams out there, but the ones with
more capital are able to go after the best players in the market. This doesn't
mean that small teams don't have talented players.

The only reason why I invited those individuals is because they are the most
talented programmers I know. I'm pretty sure there are amazing people working
on smaller companies, but when I looked at my past co-workers and developers
from my circle of friends, those were the ones I wanted to hear more from.

Anyways, hopefully this will show a little bit more about my decision making
process.

Good luck on your book! I'm excited to take a look, is there any pre-sale
already?

~~~
petr25102018
I think it is good that you have interviewed people that you know and I
definitely see the branding appeal of having some big names around. It is just
some of the wording in the book could be better, especially since the topic is
productivity (not a career success where the argument is definitely stronger).

I am not selling the book yet, I have just a sign up page for now
([https://efficientdeveloper.com](https://efficientdeveloper.com)). My take
will be more about software development as a whole rather than just the
productivity part, with productivity being just an angle of what I will cover
in the book.

------
seek3r00
It reminds me of Coders at Work:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coders_at_work](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coders_at_work)

~~~
runawaybottle
This is a must read, and I’d argue it has a very different conclusion on
programmers. They are all very different.

~~~
zenorocha
I can't believe I never seen that. I'll definitely check it out. Douglas
Crockford, Brendan Eich - those guys are my heros!

~~~
neves
I've read it 10 years ago. The only thing I remember is that the best
programmers use printf to debug :-)

------
edw519
Thank you for this, Zeno!

I read the sample chapter and enjoyed it so much, I bought the book on
gumroad. But ONE BIG NIT: the sample chapter is pdf, but the book is not. Can
you please provide me a pdf of the full book? Email on my profile.

Looking forward to reading the rest and providing feedback.

I hope you sell a bunch of books and write some more :-)

~~~
zenorocha
Hey @edw519, I chose to do the sample as PDF because it's more accessible, but
the book itself is only on .epub and .mobi so far. I'll take a look into
converting it to PDF.

Thanks you so much!

------
iKlsR
One or two open source success stories (ie. Adam Wathan with Tailwind CSS,
Taylor Otwell with Laravel) would have sealed this for me, seems a little too
corporate and other than Andy I don't know most of these people. My 2 cents,
sample chapter was interesting.

------
caiobegotti
Considering a recent thread on HN regarding mixing up personal time and
company duties I'd love to have the gist beforehand of what would be discussed
inside chapters "Your 9-to-5 Is Not Enough" and "Side Projects" as the TOC
falls short a tiny bit.

~~~
zenorocha
Hey @caiobegotti, those are definitely one of the best chapters in the book.
Feel free to purchase it on Gumroad and if you don't think it's not useful,
just send me an email to zeno@14habits.com and I'll refund you right away.

~~~
Dayshine
I think what the GP is suggesting is that having those items on the TOC
without further explanation makes it look like this book will insist that in
order to be a highly productive developer you should have a poor work life
balance. Which is nonsense at best and harmful at worst.

~~~
zenorocha
I understand your point, but I don't think we should judge any book by the
TOC. Those topics are there as a reference and as a way to draw people's
attention to each chapter. In order to fully understand, we need to dive
deeper into them.

------
utkarsh_apoorva
Great effort. I like the snippets from different developers in-context,
instead of showing the entire interview in one place.

Why did you quote Zig Zigler? Seems a little out of place. Also, I felt that
the first chapter needs to be more compelling - but maybe that's just me.

~~~
zenorocha
That's great! I'm glad you liked that interview format.

On every chapter, there's a quote. This particular one has a Zig Zigler quote
because it matches pretty well with the content of the chapter.

------
fuddle
Thanks, I'm currently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. This looks like a
good complement to it.

~~~
zenorocha
That's an amazing book indeed. I think you will like this one!

------
StopHammoTime
Interesting concepts, given the book a purchase and will take a look this
week.

~~~
zenorocha
That's great to hear! I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Feel free
to email me at zeno@14habits.com

------
christiansakai
Bought it! Looking forward to read it

~~~
zenorocha
Thank you SO much! I can't wait to hear your opinions about it

------
salilpn12
purchased it, looking forward to reading it later

~~~
zenorocha
Thanks @salilpn12, let me know what you think about it!

~~~
salilpn12
Just finished reading the whole book and it is full of golden nuggets. I'm
stuck in an area of life where I needed this. Would recommend it to everyone.
Is it fine if I write a blog based on book review(#TODO Habit 3), with credits
and a link to your book?

------
pl0x
More spam on HN. Mods please remove this post. They are clearly promoting
their book.

~~~
zenorocha
Hey @pl0x, the reason why I wrote this book is to help people in their tech
careers. Sorry if I broke some rule or anything. I thought that it would be
nice to get some feedback about the first chapter and the site.

