
Programming Notes for Professionals books - gregorymichael
http://books.goalkicker.com/TypeScriptBook/
======
ndh2
Is everyone aware that this is merely a dump of "Stack Overflow Documentation"
(not Stack Overflow Q/A), repackaged in PDF format ? (Also a request for
bitcoin donations.)

[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-d...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-
documentation)

[https://stackoverflow.com/documentation](https://stackoverflow.com/documentation)

[https://archive.org/details/documentation-
dump.7z](https://archive.org/details/documentation-dump.7z)

There is no indication that these books are curated or edited.

~~~
willtim
Agreed. The Haskell version has advanced topics such as Free Monads in chapter
8 and higher-order functions in chapter 35! The author for each piece of
content has also not been included, which means I have no way of knowing if
the content has been authored by a computer science professor or his/her
student.

~~~
bhrgunatha
There is a list of contributors at the end of each book, but it's only their
site user name with a link to the profile.

------
dcchambers
You can grab all the PDFs with wget:

    
    
      wget --random-wait -R ".html,.png" -r goalkicker.com
    

Or download the archive directly (Not PDF, data is in JSON format):
[https://archive.org/details/documentation-
dump.7z](https://archive.org/details/documentation-dump.7z)

~~~
brogrammer2018
Alternatively you can download all from
[http://books.goalkicker.com/all.zip](http://books.goalkicker.com/all.zip) :)

------
outsidetheparty
I haven't compared the text to see how much editing was involved here, but
based on the credits line in the books this appears to be the abandoned
StackOverflow Documentation beta in PDF form?

[https://stackoverflow.com/documentation](https://stackoverflow.com/documentation)

~~~
firefruit
Why did StackOverflow shut it down? It was really useful.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
> Why was this decision made and why now?

[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-d...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-
documentation)

------
sarreph
What an amazing initiative — not least because they're providing something
consumable for offline.

Does anyone have any knowledge on the quality of this material? I'd love to
dive into quite a few of them where I have surface-knowledge...

~~~
jack6e
Agreed, this is incredible - especially to have something that can be perused
in physical format.

Looking through some of the examples for the languages I know well enough to
judge, these seem to be good quality. As a simple case in point, for how to
open a file in Python they only show using a context manager. Even though you
can easily read files without that, it is the better, safer, perhaps slightly-
more-intermediate-level option and also makes a person more familiar with
context managers in general. So it is nice to see best practices presented as
the defaults.

~~~
sarreph
Thanks! Python is one of the ones I'm going to check out so that example makes
me feel confident about using this as a resource :)

------
SnowingXIV
A lot of effort went into this, I also took a look at the languages I'm
familiar with. They even have screenshots of the results and provide an
excellent way of showing exactly what you would input and see. I really
appreciate the fact that they are pdf that you can save and don't have to rely
on an internet connection.

------
Dangeranger
This is a really great effort to compile relevant answers into a narrative.

Is there any way that the community can contribute to adding new resources to
the list, so that the books can be updated in future releases?

~~~
vog
_> great effort to compile relevant answers into a narrative_

Don't confuse "StackOverflow Question&Answers" with "StackOverflow
Documentation":

[https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/](https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/)

Goalkicker "only" provided formatting and beauty. They _did not_ reformulate
tons of Q&A into a documentation - that work was already performed by the
StackOverflow Community.

~~~
Dangeranger
Wait, did the Stack Overflow community compile these answers into the ordered
list provided by the book?

What I had assumed is that the "author" of the book hand picked these answers
and arranged them together along with their chapter names into a narrative to
aid understanding.

Is my understanding incorrect?

~~~
bewuethr
No, it's "just" converting selected tags from Stack Overflow Documentation
([https://stackoverflow.com/documentation](https://stackoverflow.com/documentation)
\- now shut down) into PDFs.

------
melling
Several years ago, I would ask StackOverFlow questions on esoteric topics like
elisp, with the idea that by asking small, well-defined questions, you could
eventually create enough of a trail that no topic would remain difficult to
learn. For example, here are a few I could find:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-
wo...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-world-in-
emacs)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-
to-p...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-to-parse-csv-
and-generate-html-table)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-
qui...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz-in-
emacs-lisp)

While books are great, something more interesting would be a little app window
in your editor, where you could type (or ask Cortana, Siri, Google) “How do I
declare a set”, “parse csv“, “open file for writing”, etc., and you would see
small examples. The language is known by the editor so no need to include it
in the query.

So, for instance, if I wanted to write an F# program, which I don’t know, I
could learn it on the fly.

StackOverFlow has the database of knowledge by now. Now, how to get your exact
answer, faster?

“Siri, how do I round the corners of a view in iOS?”

~~~
ksenzee
What you're describing is not unlike howdoi:
[https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi](https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi)

------
Theodores
I was hoping that someone had harvested every PDF cited in SO answers and
culled it down to a definitive list of most popular reference works. Now there
is an idea.

------
cabalamat
Not impressed. I downloaded the python book, chose a section at random
(chapter 15: dictionaries), and found an error on the first thing I looked at.

The book says that:

    
    
        d=dict(**otherDict)
    

only works if otherDict's keys are strings, but in reality it also works if
the keys are integers:

    
    
        >>> dict(**{1:2,3:4})
        {1: 2, 3: 4}

~~~
tsuraan
Looks like a 2 vs 3 thing:

    
    
      Python 2.7.14 (default, Jan  6 2018, 14:37:03)
      [GCC 5.4.0] on linux2
      Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
      >>> dict(**{1:2,3:4})
      {1: 2, 3: 4}
      >>>
    

vs

    
    
      Python 3.4.5 (default, Jan  6 2018, 14:44:12)
      [GCC 5.4.0] on linux
      Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
      >>> dict(**{1:2,3:4})
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
      TypeError: keyword arguments must be strings
      >>>

~~~
happy-go-lucky
This works in Python 3.6:

    
    
        >>> {**{1:2,3:4}}
        {1: 2, 3: 4}
    

:)

------
mohammedri_
Absolutely incredible. Thanks for all the effort.

------
mangatmodi
Looked at some pages on Algorithm and Java, the content looks very relevant to
current practices and it is well organised!

------
robnagler
goalkicker.com is related to codeday.top afaict. They are the only two sites
on Google that match some of the snippets. CodeDay is a machine translation
blog which is very sophisticated. The PDFs appear to be a reorganization of
those blog entries.

Very interesting. Well-written by machines.

------
Validatora
Is anyone aware of a resource which allows me to store programming
documentation on .txt files? I have perused the internet but haven't found
any. I am asking because I would like to view the documents within my text
editor.

------
khuss
Great collection. Thanks for making them available to the community.

------
Raphmedia
I'm tempted to print them for those moments when the internet is down and I
still need to access SO.

~~~
vog
Why do you need to kill trees just because the internet is down?

~~~
zebrafish
Think about the trees that are used to produce paper in the same way that you
think about wheat that is used to make bread. There will always be demand for
bread, so it makes sense to manage your natural resources responsibly. No
natural resource means no product which means no business. Timber is managed
like any other crop.

If there were no paper or wood products, those trees would be cut down to be
replaced with homes, farmland, mining operations, etc. Owning land costs
money, selling timber to the fiber & wood products industry actually preserves
the forests occupying the land.

------
Bizarro
I'd love to throw the guy a few bucks in bitcoin, but the network fee is going
to cost me $11.

------
crimsonalucard
Why are there notes on Angular 2 and just Angular?

~~~
wesnerm2
AngularJs is different from the completely redesigned Angular (2+).

------
kotrunga
Wow. This is awesome. Thank you!

------
NSHippie
This is why I come to HackerNews everyday to find resources like this. Thanks
OP.

------
jmkni
Amazing, thankyou!

------
black_puppydog
This could use some explanation on the "from Stack Overflow" bit. How is
GoalKicker related to SO?

~~~
jonsagara
From the bottom of
[http://books.goalkicker.com/DotNETFrameworkBook/](http://books.goalkicker.com/DotNETFrameworkBook/)
:

"The .NET Framework Notes for Professionals book is compiled from Stack
Overflow Documentation, the content is written by the beautiful people at
Stack Overflow. Text content is released under Creative Commons BY-SA. See
credits at the end of this book whom contributed to the various chapters.
Images may be copyright of their respective owners unless otherwise specified

Book created for educational purposes and is not affiliated with .NET
Framework group(s), company(s) nor Stack Overflow. All trademarks belong to
their respective company owners"

~~~
pgt
Beat me to it :)

------
kimura
Why free? It seems like a lot of labor went into making these books.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
The same came be said of so many things. However, computing has a long history
of sharing knowledge freely. I applaud efforts like this to keep that
tradition alive.

