This reminds me aesthetically of The Way Things Work [1] which was one of my favorite books as a kid. Having a similar wordly reference as an adult has been a goal for a while.
Too much name dropping of random pieces without offering any insights why they are needed. You learn much more just skimming through a wiki article.
MisterTea 22 hours ago [-]
Amazing book for sure. David Macaulay has a few other books, four of which were turned into educational animated PBS specials. My mother got us the box set from PBS years ago.
berelig 1 days ago [-]
I've been looking around for a book like this that has scientific/engineering topics presented in a bite-sized fashion so a teenager (or even adults) can discover which ones pique their interests and are worth a deeper dive.
Would this book work or is it a bit too simple? Does anyone have another book to recommend?
kobenni 11 hours ago [-]
For mathematics, there are the Princeton Companion to Mathematics and the Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics.
tenacious_tuna 1 days ago [-]
it's been a couple decades since I've read it, but I'd buy it again as an adult. Like the peer comment says, "Engineering in Plain Sight" purports to be similar and I bought my dad a copy last christmas. Planning to spend some of my professionial development stipend on a copy this year.
kridsdale1 24 hours ago [-]
The Way Things Work is up to date. I loved it in the mid 90s and just bought a new copy for my kid this year. It has SSDs, OLEDs, Gravity Wave Detection, etc.
Acrobatic_Road 1 days ago [-]
I had the same thought. I don't remember if it was exactly this book, but I remember reading a book that explained all kinds of engineering concepts for my kid brain. And I remember the latter part of the book had some computer science content like how compression works.
vunderba 1 days ago [-]
If it had an abundance of woolly mammoths then it was likely this book. Highly recommended - covers everything from reactors to pin tumbler locks.
Apfel 1 days ago [-]
Stunningly beautiful landing page. I would never normally comment on the aesthetics of anything in the dev sphere but that completely blew me away. I'll preorder for sure.
I'd echo the other comment mentioning that a coffee-table version of this would be great.
dimal 1 days ago [-]
Agreed, it's aesthetically beautiful. It should be a coffee table book. But for the web, it has terrible usability. Really, really terrible in multiple ways. My comments will be harsh, but since the creator is obviously very skilled, he should know better.
Why multicolumn text? So it looks like an old printed manual? At first view, it's not clear where the first column ends. This is not something we see on the web (because there's no need for it), so it's not clear that the content flows from one column to the next. When the viewport is sized to two columns, I need to scroll down to finish the first column, then scroll back up to read where it continues on the second column.
Justified text is bad on the web. We're starting to get some better features to make it usable, but it's not widely supported, so right ragged text is always more readable.
There are numerous animations that never stop. This is highly distracting and makes it very difficult to read the text.
I'm sure there are more issues but the site is so unusable for me, I won't continue trying.
So, yeah. It's gorgeous design. I love it. But it's for the sake of aesthetics, not for the user's sake. It's completely unusable to me. Since this is the first installment, I hope the designer will keep the aesthetics but improve the usability in future installments.
dsego 1 days ago [-]
> Justified text is bad on the web.
Is there any reason why justified is okay printed but not on the web.
wavemode 1 days ago [-]
Beause in print you would typically use your publishing software to adjust various things, like where hypenated word breaks should happen. This is much trickier in digital media, and usually just isn't done, resulting in ugly word spacing.
bsoles 1 days ago [-]
> Justified text is bad on the web. ...so right ragged text is always more readable.
I disagree. I like justified text on the web as well as in print. To me, jagged right hand side of the text column is more disturbing than uneven spaces between words. So, you cannot universally declare that justified text is an accessibility issue.
layer8 1 days ago [-]
Accessibility issue doesn’t imply universality. Ideally, this should be a user preference setting.
vunderba 24 hours ago [-]
I'd like to see some sources on this. I've seen good and bad examples of justified text, and it's also highly dependent on the font as well.
Narishma 1 days ago [-]
> There are numerous animations that never stop. This is highly distracting and makes it very difficult to read the text.
And pegs the CPU and drains the battery.
oneoverten 18 hours ago [-]
Those animations wont "peg" any relevant CPU, and they clearly had a purpose that was not about wasting cycles or battery.
Narishma 13 hours ago [-]
They still end up doing that, regardless of the intention. It would be better if they only animated once, or just when you hover over them instead of constantly.
croemer 1 days ago [-]
On mobile there's far too much white space between sections, there are almost entire screens of nothing.
salomonk_mur 1 days ago [-]
Disagree on the animations. They are both beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point.
Your other criticism I agree with.
dimal 1 days ago [-]
I agree that they are beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point. I really, really love them. I'd love to have them on my wall.
That's not my problem. My problem is that they never stop animating. For me and many other people, when something is moving in our visual field, it is very, very difficult to read the text next to it.
Full disclosure: I'm autistic. I was wondering whether I should mention that. All the issues that I mentioned exclude me from using this resource. So maybe we could call these accessibility issues instead of usability issues. When I disclose that I'm autistic, it tends to evoke two types of responses:
1) Oh, sorry, we'll make it accessible. But they do it out of shame, which I don't like. I'd rather it's out of empathy.
2) You're too small of a segment to care about.
But I'm beginning to think that the only difference between usability and accessibility is the size of the population that's being excluded by the design. I chose to keep my autisticness separate to see how people responded when I presented this as a usability issue instead of an accessibility issue.
I'm only asking that designers have empathy for all possible users of their media. That's all. That's what good design is supposed to do.
NewsaHackO 19 hours ago [-]
There has to be a middle ground though. For instance, I am definitely the opposite; I would feel as the site would be less usable to me if it just ran once and I had to reload the page or spam click replay if I wanted to see the animation again. I'd imagine people who are slow readers or with dyslexia would feel the same, and would make similar aurguement that you are making that them auto playing the animation assuming everyone had same reading speed when the animation is in focus are not taking thier cohort in consideration due to the small size of the group. I am sure that there are some colorblindness condition that would find the colors of the site difficult to distinguish as well. I would be be more emphatic to your view point if this was a school/employment/healthcare/goverment document, but it isnt realistic to say a primarily artistic/design project has to cater to everyone's specific accessibility concerns.
eertami 18 hours ago [-]
I believe the middle ground is implementing `prefers-reduced-motion` alternatives for the looping animations.
Then it would still loop for you, but not negatively impact people who are using reduced motion settings in their browser/OS.
layer8 1 days ago [-]
I’m not autistic and I agree that nonstop animations are distracting and detrimental.
dimal 1 days ago [-]
I hope you didn’t think I meant to imply that this is only bad for autistic people. I know that many other people have the same issues. But when I mention these problems to people that don’t have difficulty, sometimes they assume it’s just me and a tiny minority.
layer8 22 hours ago [-]
I just didn’t want people to interpret your comment as only autistic people being bothered by this.
bitwize 21 hours ago [-]
Probably got a lot of neurospicy folks here on Hackernews, so there's less of a stigma associated with it, and more people familiar with the kind of sensory issues you deal with.
I feel you. I can't have autocomplete on when I'm coding, partly because having video game stuff happening in my field of view while I'm trying to focus throws me off. I'd rather just remember the name.
The pair of animations on the page are beautifully done, not just technically but aesthetically as well. If the rest of the book is like that I'll be getting a copy.
vivzkestrel 1 days ago [-]
Commendable effort, i would also like to recommend some topics/chapters/lessons whatever you want to call it
- How microprocessors and microcontrollers work
- Types of storage => RAM / ssd/ hdd / flash drives and storage formats NTFS, FAT32
- OS stuff (theading, multiprocessing, coroutines, scheduling, paging, priority)
- Some data structures stuff (trees, stacks, queues, graphs etc)
also would like to add a section about packets, network packets, tcp packets, udp packets, http packets. would be real nice to see what each packet is like in a very visually friendly way
felipemesquita 1 days ago [-]
The subtitle “A reference manual for people who design and build software” seems at odds with the description:
> This book won’t teach you how to actually make software […] It’s a manual that explains how the things you use everyday actually work.
You don’t need to be technical to read this - there are a lot of pictures and diagrams to do the heavy lifting. You just need to be curious.
dijksterhuis 1 days ago [-]
A thing for a specific audience, not a thing with a specific purpose, is how i read the subtitle.
the subtitle doesnt say what the reference manual is a reference for. just that software people might like it.
jaapz 1 days ago [-]
Audience: people who design and build software
Subject: how the things used every day by people who design and build software work
Not the subject: how to design and build software
chromanoid 1 days ago [-]
yeah, I totally agree.
It's like there was a shift in goals after the author made the title. Maybe explaining the basics was so much fun, that the initial idea got lost... I also don't think knowing how a crt monitor works is instrumental for people who want to make software. The domain is cool, but it doesn't match the content. whatissoftware.com might be better.
when it is explained how pixel, gpu or llm work, I would at least expect some intro to Von-Neumann-Architecture.
meindnoch 1 days ago [-]
The table of contents seems to have a whole chapter on "AI and ML" before starting the next chapter with "What is a byte?". Funny.
0xEF 1 days ago [-]
I'm getting the impression that the book will not be organized in any real linear or iterative order, just sections that allow you to jump around and read what you want.
croemer 1 days ago [-]
I'm confused, I can't find the content anywhere. I clicked on the TOC items but that just underlined the words. Is this just an announcement?
falcor84 1 days ago [-]
Yes, just an announcement. There's an FAQ at the bottom:
>When will it launch?
> I'm not entirely sure yet. I'd love to get it out before the European summer this year. It's a lot of work to illustrate everything so you might need to have some patience.
When your finger gets close to the [touch] screen it causes a disturbance in the *magnetic* field that the electrodes sense.
Surely they mean electric field - for a capacitive touch screen.
marcosdumay 18 hours ago [-]
Well, it's a disturbance on the AC properties... so both.
But yeah, we usually talk about capacitance as an "electrical-only" phenomenon. It's quite weird to se it referred as magnetic.
constantcrying 20 hours ago [-]
How do you cause a disturbance in an electric field without causing a disturbance in the magnetic field?
robocat 19 hours ago [-]
To imply capacitive touch sensing uses magnetics is just so wrong - I can't imagine how someone trying to be technical could make such an egregious error.
A material can affect an electric field without affecting a magnetic field: electrically conductive (versus insulator that won't affect a field so much except via dielectric effects).
A material can affect a magnetic field without much affecting an electric field e.g. ferrites are non-conducting.
A finger changes the capacitance between two "plates" and that is what is detected.
Also the attached drawing shows diamonds but I've only ever seen flat wires myself (when looking closely at touch screens you can sometimes see the transparent sense wires). But I'm no specialist and I don't know how correct the drawing is.
constantcrying 19 hours ago [-]
Changes in the electric field of a capacitor cause changes in the magnetic field.
Electric and magnetic fields aren't Independent. Again, I asked about disturbances, Maxwells equations make it pretty obvious that changes in one cause changes in the other.
robocat 15 hours ago [-]
Pedantically correct but rather irrelevant to the topic of capacitive touch sensors. Your point just isn't helpful.
XCSme 1 days ago [-]
Nice landing page, but I'm confused. The header is about software, but many diagrams are about hardware.
stronglikedan 1 days ago [-]
It'll come in handy for when I try to destroy a hard drive by getting the actuator arm to move back and forth at the drive's harmonic frequency.
kmoser 23 hours ago [-]
The illustrations are definitely the secret sauce that makes this so engaging and informative. I'd also like to see links to where I can learn more about particular topics online. For example:
> Or maybe you’ve wondered why we call it a Gaussian blur?
When you know the term gaussian (blur) it's trivial to do a Google search
internetter 19 hours ago [-]
Google does not return the best content.
sfn42 10 hours ago [-]
It usually returns good enough content for me
kookamamie 1 days ago [-]
Looks like form-over-function to me. Cool looks, little content.
scubbo 1 days ago [-]
It's just an announcement page, for now.
pflanze 7 hours ago [-]
I think the hard drive platter moves in the wrong direction--it pushes the head into the platter instead of away from it if it gets too close.
clausz 1 days ago [-]
How old is this? Copyright at the bottom of the page says "1990".
gregschlom 1 days ago [-]
I think it's a cool little easter egg. Goes well with the technical illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk at the top and the pixelated font for the titles.
Also, maybe the author meant to say he started thinking about this book since 1990, too.
Either way the copyright year doesn't matter. You can put anything
junon 1 days ago [-]
It's definitely not from 1990.
rossant 21 hours ago [-]
Probably the author himself is from 1990.
thallavajhula 17 hours ago [-]
When you sign up for the mailing list, you get a response back with status: 200 | created.
chef's kiss Something so basic and yet, so aesthetically pleasing.
pier25 22 hours ago [-]
How were the animations done?
From inspecting the DOM it's just animated SVGs but I'm guessing these were authored with some other tool.
Initially I thought these were made with Rive but AFAIK their engine runs on <canvas>.
oneoverten 18 hours ago [-]
Just figma apparently, it's disclosed in the FAQ.
MatthiasWandel 1 days ago [-]
nice, but spotted several inaccuracies on the landing page. perhaps not the best reference.
zh3 22 hours ago [-]
Yes, very first item:-
> When your finger gets close to the screen it causes a disturbance in the magnetic field that the electrodes sense.
Sure should be capacitive?
WillAdams 1 days ago [-]
Which chapters are done?
I was very excited to go to (and link/reference) Chapter 2: Fonts and Vectors but it doesn't seem to be done yet?
The progress indicator shows that this is only just begun?
croemer 1 days ago [-]
No chapters are done - it's a bit weird that this fact is buried deep down in the FAQs. I would have expected the fact it's an announcement to be mentioned above the fold.
evanletz 1 days ago [-]
This is awesome. Reminds me of that book "How Things Work" that breaks down the everyday item into understandable pieces
skadamat 1 days ago [-]
Lovely website! I stumbled into this other account by the same author that showcases some of the work that might end up in this 'book':
On my old phone it was a smooth and stable experience. I really liked it.
khaledh 1 days ago [-]
Very nice. The design reminds me of a website that I forgot to bookmark a long while ago, it was about explaining network protocols at the wire level, and it had some of the most amazing visuals that I ever saw. It's a shame that I forgot what it was, and googling doesn't help. If anyone knows what I'm talking about please share the link.
virogenesis 1 days ago [-]
Let us know if you find that site asking for my kid :)
promiseofbeans 1 days ago [-]
Looks like it might have been VisualLand.net, which isn't around anymore. Looking at the archive of the site (https://web.archive.org/web/20130811073141/http%3A//www.visu...), most of their animations / diagrams were Flash, so no longer run, and don't seem to work with archive.org's emulator either.
khaledh 1 days ago [-]
No, that's not it unfortunately. It was a single page with a style of diagrams that shows a high-level format of something, with arrows to a zoomed-in version that details the structure of the fields. I remember its colour scheme being dominated by light blue and green, IIRC.
gecko6 1 days ago [-]
Could this be it? TLS 1.3 connection, with every field in the packets labelled: https://tls13.xargs.org
khaledh 24 hours ago [-]
No, not that one either. The page was static and full of high quality images dissecting the format structures.
truetraveller 1 days ago [-]
Where the visuals interactive or static?
khaledh 24 hours ago [-]
Static.
cjr 1 days ago [-]
looks great, i'd definitely pay for a coffee table style version of a book like this!
VoltCraft 1 days ago [-]
copyright 1990? I doubt that. layout and finish are first rate on this.signed up for the mailing list - hoping it will be touched again in 1991
agos 1 days ago [-]
the design is really cool, but the two columns are really confusing on a screen that is not tall enough to fully contain them
mattbee 1 days ago [-]
Exceptional landing page, very exciting project.
dirtybirdnj 1 days ago [-]
I really like those illustrations I hope you keep going with this progress. Looks great and I think it could be a very engaging tool because of its visual appeal.
Don't let the haters get to you. Let him cook people.
ChrisMarshallNY 1 days ago [-]
Very cool resource!
cush 21 hours ago [-]
Gorgeous UI
ValveFan6969 20 hours ago [-]
I'm an Atheist, and I would like to know if AI models have the ability to detect sarcasm? Is there a way to make them understand that? Or maybe just give context in parentheses of something sarcastic I'm about to say? If I wanted to, can I just tell the AI that everything I am about to say is sarcastic? Maybe put quotation marks over the things I am about to say so that the AI comprehends the context?
If anyone has done this and made success, I'd really like to know how you did it and if there's any tricks to accomplishing that.
coolThingsFirst 23 hours ago [-]
So.... none of the chapters are available?
xabush 1 days ago [-]
Amazing design! Just joined the mailing list
martin_henk 1 days ago [-]
Really rad!
frank20022 4 days ago [-]
wow, excellent job here!
yapyap 1 days ago [-]
Honestly you had me at the graphics, really neat.
game_the0ry 22 hours ago [-]
Same. That site is masterful example of just cool design.
scop 1 days ago [-]
I'm sensing an uncomfortable amount of human labor behind this. Even worse it appears to be labor done for the sake of the thing itself. shudder Terrible and makes me feel bad about myself. Back to the AI slop I go!
exe34 21 hours ago [-]
some people got all the discipline!
khana 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:47:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
[1] https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-way-things-work-newly-revise...
https://practical.engineering/book
Too much name dropping of random pieces without offering any insights why they are needed. You learn much more just skimming through a wiki article.
Would this book work or is it a bit too simple? Does anyone have another book to recommend?
I'd echo the other comment mentioning that a coffee-table version of this would be great.
Why multicolumn text? So it looks like an old printed manual? At first view, it's not clear where the first column ends. This is not something we see on the web (because there's no need for it), so it's not clear that the content flows from one column to the next. When the viewport is sized to two columns, I need to scroll down to finish the first column, then scroll back up to read where it continues on the second column.
Justified text is bad on the web. We're starting to get some better features to make it usable, but it's not widely supported, so right ragged text is always more readable.
There are numerous animations that never stop. This is highly distracting and makes it very difficult to read the text.
I'm sure there are more issues but the site is so unusable for me, I won't continue trying.
So, yeah. It's gorgeous design. I love it. But it's for the sake of aesthetics, not for the user's sake. It's completely unusable to me. Since this is the first installment, I hope the designer will keep the aesthetics but improve the usability in future installments.
Is there any reason why justified is okay printed but not on the web.
I disagree. I like justified text on the web as well as in print. To me, jagged right hand side of the text column is more disturbing than uneven spaces between words. So, you cannot universally declare that justified text is an accessibility issue.
And pegs the CPU and drains the battery.
Your other criticism I agree with.
That's not my problem. My problem is that they never stop animating. For me and many other people, when something is moving in our visual field, it is very, very difficult to read the text next to it.
Full disclosure: I'm autistic. I was wondering whether I should mention that. All the issues that I mentioned exclude me from using this resource. So maybe we could call these accessibility issues instead of usability issues. When I disclose that I'm autistic, it tends to evoke two types of responses:
1) Oh, sorry, we'll make it accessible. But they do it out of shame, which I don't like. I'd rather it's out of empathy.
2) You're too small of a segment to care about.
But I'm beginning to think that the only difference between usability and accessibility is the size of the population that's being excluded by the design. I chose to keep my autisticness separate to see how people responded when I presented this as a usability issue instead of an accessibility issue.
I'm only asking that designers have empathy for all possible users of their media. That's all. That's what good design is supposed to do.
Then it would still loop for you, but not negatively impact people who are using reduced motion settings in their browser/OS.
I feel you. I can't have autocomplete on when I'm coding, partly because having video game stuff happening in my field of view while I'm trying to focus throws me off. I'd rather just remember the name.
https://alcohollick.com/
> Dan Hollick.
> Design, technically.
Blogs about using Figma to create things (like this).
god damn, that's some patient making animation right there
> This book won’t teach you how to actually make software […] It’s a manual that explains how the things you use everyday actually work. You don’t need to be technical to read this - there are a lot of pictures and diagrams to do the heavy lifting. You just need to be curious.
the subtitle doesnt say what the reference manual is a reference for. just that software people might like it.
Subject: how the things used every day by people who design and build software work
Not the subject: how to design and build software
It's like there was a shift in goals after the author made the title. Maybe explaining the basics was so much fun, that the initial idea got lost... I also don't think knowing how a crt monitor works is instrumental for people who want to make software. The domain is cool, but it doesn't match the content. whatissoftware.com might be better.
when it is explained how pixel, gpu or llm work, I would at least expect some intro to Von-Neumann-Architecture.
>When will it launch?
> I'm not entirely sure yet. I'd love to get it out before the European summer this year. It's a lot of work to illustrate everything so you might need to have some patience.
But yeah, we usually talk about capacitance as an "electrical-only" phenomenon. It's quite weird to se it referred as magnetic.
A material can affect an electric field without affecting a magnetic field: electrically conductive (versus insulator that won't affect a field so much except via dielectric effects).
A material can affect a magnetic field without much affecting an electric field e.g. ferrites are non-conducting.
A finger changes the capacitance between two "plates" and that is what is detected.
Also the attached drawing shows diamonds but I've only ever seen flat wires myself (when looking closely at touch screens you can sometimes see the transparent sense wires). But I'm no specialist and I don't know how correct the drawing is.
Electric and magnetic fields aren't Independent. Again, I asked about disturbances, Maxwells equations make it pretty obvious that changes in one cause changes in the other.
> Or maybe you’ve wondered why we call it a Gaussian blur?
Nowhere is Carl Friedrich Gauss mentioned, which is unfortunate. This should really link to the Wikipedia entry for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_blur.
Also, maybe the author meant to say he started thinking about this book since 1990, too.
Either way the copyright year doesn't matter. You can put anything
chef's kiss Something so basic and yet, so aesthetically pleasing.
From inspecting the DOM it's just animated SVGs but I'm guessing these were authored with some other tool.
Initially I thought these were made with Rive but AFAIK their engine runs on <canvas>.
> When your finger gets close to the screen it causes a disturbance in the magnetic field that the electrodes sense.
Sure should be capacitive?
I was very excited to go to (and link/reference) Chapter 2: Fonts and Vectors but it doesn't seem to be done yet?
The progress indicator shows that this is only just begun?
https://typefully.com/DanHollick
Don't let the haters get to you. Let him cook people.
If anyone has done this and made success, I'd really like to know how you did it and if there's any tricks to accomplishing that.