Ask HN: Any interest in a comprehensive book on fullstack development? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any interest in a comprehensive book on fullstack development?

1 pointfrfl7 comments

I'm trying to gauge interest in a potential book about fullstack development that would cover things like: web history, http/https, rest/rpc, database, queues, message brokers, architecture, patterns, deployment, monitoring, cloud, etc. It would do so in a bottom up approach without relying on any specific framework (no Django, no Rails, etc). Goal would be to allow a reader familiar with web dev to fully understand all aspects of fullstack development in one single resources with pointers to additional resources as necessary.

Focus being fundamentals, not new and shiny or what's popular right now.

As far as I know no such comprehensive resource exists. All resources are disparate and cover different subsets of the topics of fullstack development.

Obviously it would be a sizable undertaking, so wanted to see how much interest there would be before committing to it. It may span multiple volumes due to the amount of content you'd need to cover.

... I thought about writing one of those in 2005.

This book is what got me started on my career

https://philip.greenspun.com/panda/

That's really close to what I was thinking. Thanks for sharing the link.

Have you ever written anything big before?

"It may span multiple volumes due to the amount of content you'd need to cover."

This sounds like one of those never ending projects that seem like a good idea at the time, but once you start putting in the work, you realize you bit off way more than you can chew...

In my head, the volumes would be standalone, specific to a particular topic, backend, frontend, cloud, devops, etc. So it would be one book at a time, not all at once.

No, I haven't written anything this large. Hence asking before committing to it. Once book (volume) may take a year or more I'm guessing.

On-line curated anthology of works/resources can more readily keep pace with current technological trends/changes than published volumes.

A difficulty you will face is that if it relates to existing products it will date quickly, and if it doesn't it may just appear to generic. Not sure what you intend?

> Focus being fundamentals, not new and shiny or what's popular right now.

Well the intent is on the core principles and fundamentals, as I mentioned in my original post. So those shouldn't change year-to-year. Decade-to-decade, maybe, but most books go out of date within a decade anyway, aside from truly timeless ones, so that's not really a priority or a concern.

I was thinking something akin to Designing Data Intensive Applications, as an example, which focuses on lot of core principles, but mentions currently relevant technologies and implementations as appropriate. Obviously Designing Data Intensive Applications is a world class book, so not trying to draw a direct comparison by any means, just to provide a similar example.

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