

Hacking Happy - whit537
http://hackinghappy.com/

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jiggy2011
OT: Does this title remind anyone of the "happy hackers handbook" or whatever
it was called that was widely circulated online in the late 90s?

It taught the basics of stuff like telnet , traceroute and how you should
choose an ISP that provided you with a "shell account".

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xk_id
man i loved that :) guide to mostly harmless hacking (GTMHH) :D

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jessaustin
It's silly to provide a "read an excerpt" link that is just the generic intro-
to-this-book copy that's approximately reproduced on the page that contains
said link. "Hackers like to optimize things." Gee, thanks for that.

Excerpts should be meaty: show me what's going on in the third section of
chapter 6. I may not understand all the prerequisites, but I can at least
judge whether anything is actually happening in this book, before I give you
money.

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f4stjack
I would have bought the book if I could see what was in it. Don't get me
wrong, I am not talking about the entire book, even the chapter headlines
would work. The exercept is not enough to make me want it. Pity, it sounded
interesting...

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ameyp
You can have a look at the TOC here: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AGOLLVC>
("Click to LOOK INSIDE!")

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xentac
This book is by a programmer, for programmers, to help them quantify their
happiness and take action to improve it, instead of focusing on churning
widgets (GTD) or whatever it is you focus on.

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piqufoh
Yeah.. - but why read this over any one of hundreds other books/blogs/articles
which make similar claims?

Phrases like 'quantifying their happiness' make me sad.

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xentac
I'm not sure you actually understand my phrase 'quantifying their happiness'.
It uses tests derived from The Feeling Good Handbook, Dr. David Burns and Beck
Anxiety Inventory, Dr. Aaron Beck to track emotional well being over time.

It makes it possible to compare how you feel with various points in the past
to track an overall improvement or regression.

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piqufoh
You're right, I don't understand. And to be honest you're not making me want
to very much either.

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mikegirouard
I thought the sidebar was clever:

> If you enjoyed a pirated copy of Hacking Happy, compliment the author by:
> GitTip, Flattr, e-mail, Review

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buchuki
It's published creative commons, so the piracy is legal, even encouraged.

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reedlaw
CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 says:

> You are free:

> to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work

I would not want to make the word "pirate" synonymous with "copy".

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kenbellows
Isn't it already, though? From how the media uses it, pirating
software/ebooks/etc. is copying without permission, right? So in this case,
the use of the word "pirate" is a bit ironic, since it isn't really possible
under the CC license, but I would think it is still basically valid.

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throwaway54-762
Except the CC license is explicit permission to copy. So even under the
media's definition of piracy, this is not it.

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kenbellows
Again, the use of "piracy" here is ironic, sarcastic, facetious.... As such,
it doesn't really equate "piracy" with "copying" in a general sense, only in
the sense used the author of the website. In a general sense, everyone knows
it isn't piracy if it's legal.

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boothead
Anyone who's read it care to share their thoughts? I've got more queued up
books than I can handle right now!

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xentac
I helped edit the first 4 chapters. One benefit of the book is it's short. All
the information you need is condensed into 150 pages.

It starts out being immediately applicable (Chapter 2: Write Tests First),
giving you systematic methods to measure various happiness qualities. After
that, it helps you define what would make your life happier. From there it
talks about specific ways to address the types of problems people run into
when trying to improve their happiness.

Throughout the whole book, it tries to relate the concepts to programming
ideas (testing, specs, debugging, etc). This isn't a general public self-help
book, it's specifically for people who program or are technically minded.
That's what makes it unique.

If I had to knock the book, I'd say that some of the metaphors are stretched a
little bit. Overall the concepts map well, but every so often you're kind of
like, "huh... yeah, I guess those are the same things..."

Edit: Added something negative to say.

