kadavy's comments

Thanks! You do have the narrative correct – this has happened very organically, and today's success is a huge surprise!

I'm glad the community has my financial interests in mind. After all, the better this book does, the more I can dedicate myself to teaching design.

Still, I sympathize with OP, as he appears to be in Turkmenistan. Hopefully there is some legit way for him to get a copy. I'm looking into it.

(I am the author)

Agreed, he's in Turkmenistan! Checking with my publisher to see what his options are. (I'm the author)

I'm the author of this book, and I am blown away that it currently ranks #36 on all of Amazon[1], right behind the very deserving Eric Ries, who is also launching today.

Thank you so much to the entire HN community for everything. I can't even list the number of ways you have helped me, and you certainly have come through today. Thank you.

UPDATE: It's now at #22[2]. Right by Tim Ferriss. OMFG. Thank you for buying the shit out of my book today, HN.

UPDATE 2: It's now at #18[3], which puts it on the first page of best-sellers (where more randoms will see it). This is huge!

[1] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3bw8/reis-and-kadavy [2] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3net/22-w-tim-ferriss [3] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3nae/number-18

Thanks for that explanation! Now I understand better why I don't get a larger cut for ebooks. I guess since Amazon commands the distribution, they can command a larger portion of the sale price.

(I am the author of Design for Hackers)

I personally haven't seen it on the Kindle, and consuming it that way sounds painful (there are so many illustrations). But, some seem to think it looks good on Kindle Cloudreader http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2997007

(I am the author)

Thanks! But CRAP! Don't want them to run out.

That's a pretty amazing amount of stuff for buying a few books – also an interesting lesson in aligning partners and motivating people to buy now.

> the design of the blog doesn't use whitespace effectively.

Could you be more specific? My blog definitely needs a design refresh (your quote is right – I've been writing a book the past year so haven't had the time to design), but I'm sure you don't mean that the entire blog design fails to use white space effectively :)

This post is based upon a part of my book, in which I do mention the italics, but I left it out on the first run. I've now edited to post so I do mention it. Thanks for noticing / commenting!

I'm uncomfortable with the notion that there is a "proper" way to use a search engine. It seems like we should design search engines based upon our audience's behavior.

Here's a link to my current proposal video for easy clicking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WGNCk4ClzU

Gah! Just ordered one off Apple.com and they estimate it will arrive next Thursday :P

Heck, beyond tux rental, I'd like just a simple suit rental for those rare occasions I'm attending a wedding.

Good point - sometimes there are other things that can have far more ROI for a budding business than A/B testing.

I think you're implying that putting up a slide with a faceless person on it and calling them a "bitch" is inherently morally objectionable? If so, I wouldn't agree with that.

Louis CK called his 4 year old daughter a "bitch" [0] on stage, and I know I'm not alone in thinking it was hilarious.

Noah called an anonymous person a bitch. If it were a comedy club, probably nothing would have been said. But, it was a tech conference, and there probably weren't many females there, so it came off as sexist, and it alienated and offended at least one person. As the author alludes to when mentioning the style of presentation, the line between conference presentation and comedy routine is blurred.

Noah made an attempt at comedy, and it apparently didn't work out. (I wasn't there, so maybe it was hilarious)

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRhr502wIc#t=1m24s

I came here to say this. Why do we use this word? I prefer the word "database" to "douchebag."

This is going to be a very biased comment because Noah is a close personal friend of mine.

Noah will generally be the same guy while talking to your parents as he is having a beer with close friends: direct, open, and sometimes irreverent. This is shocking to many people in our (to use the author's term) "post-polite" society, but this is precisely why Noah is one of my favorite people in the world. When you're talking to Noah, you know that he will tell you exactly what he thinks, and he'll have fun doing it.

I owe a tremendous portion of any success I've had to Noah. In addition to being a brilliant marketer, Noah has taught me to ask for forgiveness and not for permission - something every entrepreneur needs to be reminded of every once in awhile. He's always been a huge help to me. A mere 2-minute conversation with him can be pure gold, so it's a shame that the author was too upset to absorb what was (just positing - I wasn't there) probably a great presentation.

On one hand, I personally would not have used "the bitch slide" in a presentation. There are not enough women in tech, and while I wouldn't compare the word "bitch" to a racial slur, it is just sexist enough to ensure that at least some of the few women who are in the audience will feel alienated when used within the context of a male-dominated conference.

I'm sure that Noah doesn't really think that his ex-girlfriend is a bitch. His current girlfriend is the only serious relationship I've known him to have in the past 5 years, so he may have just made up this ex for the sake of joking. In actuality, Noah is one of the more emotionally mature and communicative people I've ever met, so he's perfectly capable of understanding that relationships are two-way streets.

On the other hand, the hypersensitivity the author demonstrates is exactly the kind of buttoned-up bourgeois bullshit that made me want to work for myself. I want the freedom to be myself. Sexuality, relationships, and the ambivalence that comes from all of it are a part of being a human, and success in entrepreneurship is about as close as one can come to self-actualization (at least in America).

The line:

> the small but influential industry of high tech companies and service providers who cater to high tech startup companies (yes, I’m serious, there is such an industry)

gives away that the author was clearly out of her element. This isn't the world of stodgy HR policies and training manuals. We make it up as we go along, we test the boundaries, and sometimes we make mistakes just to find out where those boundaries are. I'll be damned if a flame post and an errant Sriracha bottle is going to take that away from us.

That's a great progression you've outlined there (and looking at your work, it has clearly worked well). I think the whole process will go more smoothly if there is a framework within which to make those observations. Understanding the philosophies behind design principles, typography, geometric relationships, use of white space, composition, and color theory will make it easier to understand what you're observing.

So, I also suggest my own book, which comes out in September, and will hopefully provide such a framework for programmers learning to design: http://designforhackers.com

Thanks! :)

He seems so tired. Get well Steve. Beautiful building!