Hello HN friends!<p>I never thought I'd say this, but - yes - I just published a book!<p>14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers is now available for everyone.<p>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.<p>To be honest, I never wanted to write a book, but I believe that being a developer is more than knowing the hottest tools.<p>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.<p>Because of that, I decided to reach out to the best developers I know and ask them tips on how to be more productive.<p>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.<p>This book is a collection of valuable learnings not only from me but from experienced programmers from all over the world.<p>I hope you like it :)<p>Let me know if you have any questions! I'm here to answer every single one of them.
Thanks for sharing the first chapter!<p>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.<p>> Instead, we should practice JOMO (the joy of missing out), which is mostly about being happy and content with what you already know.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Minor nitpick: I feel like the links on all those company icons is unnecessary (alt text on hover would be fine).<p>Interestingly taking the first letter of each company leads to the acronym - GAGMASS.. A bit catchier than FANG :)
Disclaimer: I am writing a book on the same topic (nevertheless it will be quite different from the content perspective).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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".<p>Anyways there goes my little rant... Definitely congrats on publishing a book, it is a struggle!
It reminds me of Coders at Work: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coders_at_work" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coders_at_work</a>
Thank you for this, Zeno!<p>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.<p>Looking forward to reading the rest and providing feedback.<p>I hope you sell a bunch of books and write some more :-)
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.
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.
Great effort. I like the snippets from different developers in-context, instead of showing the entire interview in one place.<p>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.