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Show HN: Swimming in Tech Debt

(helpthisbook.com)
157 points loumf | 3 comments | 05 Sep 25 05:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.606s | source

This is the first half of my book, “Swimming in Tech Debt”. It is available at a pre-launch sale price of $0.99 (https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book).

I have been working on it since January 2024. It is based on some posts in my blog, but expands on my ideas quite a bit.

In September 2024, excerpts appeared in Gergely Orosz’s Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, which helped me get a lot of feedback that expanded the book from my initial idea. This half is about what I expected to do before that —- the rest of the book goes into team and CTO practices.

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brudgers ◴[03 Sep 25 19:17 UTC] No.45119470[source]▶
Congratulations on writing a book and getting it out in the world.

1. It took me two tries to realize there is more than the table of contents and find the Unlabeled links on the left. Just make the text in the TOC clickable.

2. Maybe text navigation didn't work the first time because I did not select the correct option on the popup about interaction. This is a distraction from reading irrespective of what I picked.

3. Advice: make the reading experience work like readers expect. There are conventions. Trying to be clever doesn't benefit your readers...and will annoy at least one of them.

4. Nobody likes popups. Nobody. Nobody.

Good luck.

replies(2): >>45136906 #>>45137535 #
1. zachrip ◴[05 Sep 25 10:11 UTC] No.45136906[source]▶
This is a website to get feedback about their book, your ux complaints are with "helpthisbook."
replies(1): >>45141500 #
2. brudgers ◴[05 Sep 25 17:55 UTC] No.45141500[source]▶
The author is looking at this page.

The author chose the format to present their work and posted the link. They own the problems associated with their book, are in a position to choose other options, and can benefit from the feedback.

The website designers probably aren't looking at this page and even if they were, the problem is not as important to them as it is to the author.

replies(1): >>45141806 #
3. loumf ◴[05 Sep 25 18:19 UTC] No.45141806[source]▶
Agreed. I am pretty sure that they are going to look at it though. I am in close contact with them.