I actually feel like a printed reference is proportionally less useful than it once was, as ease of reading electronic documents improved (you can buy a Kindle e.g.) and it became more and more valuable to be able to copy-paste which is frustrating with print.
For example Godbolt ("Compiler Explorer") and similar suck-it-and-see sites are really nice for taking example code and answering your questions, if I copy-paste the example from a book, and tweak it, assuming the author did their job and the code actually works (this was too often not the case in older books) I can check it works as I expected. If I had to laboriously hand type the example that's much harder for the same value.
Even twenty years ago it was common to offer larger pieces of code from technical books as downloads, but unlike copy-paste the downloads only pay off for larger codebases. If your book builds a 40 000 line library of structures and algorithms, the download is great, but for a twenty line example the download is almost as cumbersome as hand typing it, copy-paste is right in the sweet spot for this.
I do own one or two very modern programming books in hard copy, but they're mostly not "that sort" of books where you'd want to run example code, and I'm increasingly ambivalent about the value of the printed book in this space, whereas I only read novels on paper.
Kindle is great for books I read front to back, but for jumping around in references experience is bad.
For reading references I prefer HTML in a browser where I can have multiple tabs on multiple sections and where I can do "open this link in background so I can get back to it after finishing this paragraph"
But many reference style books I tend to go for the physical book, where I can jump back and forth quickly. Combined with my brain which has a surprising quality in remembering where in a book something was said ...
I completely understand the downvotes, but as a German, I couldn't help but chuckle and think: "yes!"
The website's design is so bad, it's almost a new userinyerface.com. I don't even know where to start, so let's go left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. Grab a bag of chips if you wish, because I'll be going on a rant :D.
Alright, top left:
We get two photos (well, clearly rendered, but made to look like photos) of boxes like those software boxes that were sold in the 2000 era. Clearly they're selling something, is it software, is it mentoring (it says so on the box, but that's the brand name I guess?)? Does this run on Windows 98 or XP?
The two boxes also look identical, but a closer look reveals they aren't. Actually, to me, the links behind them revealed they aren't. The links also reveal it's not software but a mentoring program. In a box. From 2000. Ok.
Let's move on to the center column. A title (makes sense), font choice ok but not brilliant - the plus signs of C++ just look horrible; clearly for a site that specialises on C++, you choose a font that does that better. Date of the post is great; some newer websites omit that and it always infuriates me. It's a German website, it will have the date and all other relevant information; that at least you can rely on.
Then there's a tweet button, a linkedin share button but no whitespace between the two, then a FB like button with whitespace to the linkedin button and a FB share button that has a different blue than the FB like button, and the share button text baseline is different to the other buttons. Oh my...
Moving over to the right. Left alignment seems purely optional, and as such, the "become a patreon" button grants itself some sweet ~20px margin. It's also horribly blurry on my screen. Then we have the "Subscribe to the newsletter (+ pdf bundle)" heading which has so much whitespace to the email field that you have to look twice to be sure they're connected. That whole input field... I mean, why? Why not just put "email" as a placeholder in the input, and align the "subscribe" button in one row with the input? This is all followed by the ">> Start here <<" and ">> Visual tour <<" buttons (two >> arrows, really?), which again are blurry, have different sizes, yet again a different margin (who needs alignment anyway...) - also "start here" with what? If that's your call to action, why not put it in the center of the page?
In some cute way, this gives me massive retro vibes to the time where we still had under-construction gifs. It would be insanely funny if this website was satirical. But it isn't, it's trying to promote a brand new book.
And that's the sad state about the German software industry. The industry has treated software engineering like mechanical engineering way too long, with isolated teams that have long iteration cycles. Modern software engineering in other parts of the world (like the bay area) has much more design thinking incorporated into it. Imagine any company launching on HN with a website like this... This is, fundamentally, a structural problem, and will only change if the average developer also demands more design from websites.
The site works for me: I can always double-click in the middle to push the cruft offscreen (I hate sites with aggressive sidebars). Some of his posts are quite good.
> And that's the sad state about the German software industry. The industry has treated software engineering like mechanical engineering way too long, with isolated teams that have long iteration cycles.
So true! There are some fabulous programmers in Germany but German industry seems pretty much incapable of producing much decent software, much less software companies.
And the much vaunted "startup" scene in Berlin is pretty dire: almost all the "startups" are actually just small businesses. Not that there is anything at all wrong with small businesses -- I love to do business with them! -- but a startup is a different beast.
I happen to know the guy from the linked article from several meetups here in Germany and while I stick to the old saying that if you don't have anything nice to say about a person it's better to say nothing at all, I just want to say that I can somewhat relate as I do get cringe feelings as well. Try listening to one of his talks and make up your own mind.
On a side note: It's interesting to see a list of stated facts that a _professional C++ developer must know_ without having any real world, industrial experience with small/middle or large codebases for the last 15+ years. So there's that.
16 comments
[ 112 ms ] story [ 1314 ms ] threadIm interested in therefore in this edition. But I miss here a printed version?
For example Godbolt ("Compiler Explorer") and similar suck-it-and-see sites are really nice for taking example code and answering your questions, if I copy-paste the example from a book, and tweak it, assuming the author did their job and the code actually works (this was too often not the case in older books) I can check it works as I expected. If I had to laboriously hand type the example that's much harder for the same value.
Even twenty years ago it was common to offer larger pieces of code from technical books as downloads, but unlike copy-paste the downloads only pay off for larger codebases. If your book builds a 40 000 line library of structures and algorithms, the download is great, but for a twenty line example the download is almost as cumbersome as hand typing it, copy-paste is right in the sweet spot for this.
I do own one or two very modern programming books in hard copy, but they're mostly not "that sort" of books where you'd want to run example code, and I'm increasingly ambivalent about the value of the printed book in this space, whereas I only read novels on paper.
For reading references I prefer HTML in a browser where I can have multiple tabs on multiple sections and where I can do "open this link in background so I can get back to it after finishing this paragraph"
But many reference style books I tend to go for the physical book, where I can jump back and forth quickly. Combined with my brain which has a surprising quality in remembering where in a book something was said ...
Maybe you can elaborate on what your problem is with this website specifically and the German software industry in general?
The website's design is so bad, it's almost a new userinyerface.com. I don't even know where to start, so let's go left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. Grab a bag of chips if you wish, because I'll be going on a rant :D.
Alright, top left:
We get two photos (well, clearly rendered, but made to look like photos) of boxes like those software boxes that were sold in the 2000 era. Clearly they're selling something, is it software, is it mentoring (it says so on the box, but that's the brand name I guess?)? Does this run on Windows 98 or XP?
The two boxes also look identical, but a closer look reveals they aren't. Actually, to me, the links behind them revealed they aren't. The links also reveal it's not software but a mentoring program. In a box. From 2000. Ok.
Let's move on to the center column. A title (makes sense), font choice ok but not brilliant - the plus signs of C++ just look horrible; clearly for a site that specialises on C++, you choose a font that does that better. Date of the post is great; some newer websites omit that and it always infuriates me. It's a German website, it will have the date and all other relevant information; that at least you can rely on.
Then there's a tweet button, a linkedin share button but no whitespace between the two, then a FB like button with whitespace to the linkedin button and a FB share button that has a different blue than the FB like button, and the share button text baseline is different to the other buttons. Oh my...
Moving over to the right. Left alignment seems purely optional, and as such, the "become a patreon" button grants itself some sweet ~20px margin. It's also horribly blurry on my screen. Then we have the "Subscribe to the newsletter (+ pdf bundle)" heading which has so much whitespace to the email field that you have to look twice to be sure they're connected. That whole input field... I mean, why? Why not just put "email" as a placeholder in the input, and align the "subscribe" button in one row with the input? This is all followed by the ">> Start here <<" and ">> Visual tour <<" buttons (two >> arrows, really?), which again are blurry, have different sizes, yet again a different margin (who needs alignment anyway...) - also "start here" with what? If that's your call to action, why not put it in the center of the page?
In some cute way, this gives me massive retro vibes to the time where we still had under-construction gifs. It would be insanely funny if this website was satirical. But it isn't, it's trying to promote a brand new book.
And that's the sad state about the German software industry. The industry has treated software engineering like mechanical engineering way too long, with isolated teams that have long iteration cycles. Modern software engineering in other parts of the world (like the bay area) has much more design thinking incorporated into it. Imagine any company launching on HN with a website like this... This is, fundamentally, a structural problem, and will only change if the average developer also demands more design from websites.
> And that's the sad state about the German software industry. The industry has treated software engineering like mechanical engineering way too long, with isolated teams that have long iteration cycles.
So true! There are some fabulous programmers in Germany but German industry seems pretty much incapable of producing much decent software, much less software companies.
And the much vaunted "startup" scene in Berlin is pretty dire: almost all the "startups" are actually just small businesses. Not that there is anything at all wrong with small businesses -- I love to do business with them! -- but a startup is a different beast.
On a side note: It's interesting to see a list of stated facts that a _professional C++ developer must know_ without having any real world, industrial experience with small/middle or large codebases for the last 15+ years. So there's that.