Making Software

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope and Positioning

  • Some readers find a mismatch between the title/subtitle (“for people who design and build software”) and the description (“won’t teach you how to actually make software” and focuses on how everyday things work).
  • Criticism that hardware-heavy examples (CRT, touchscreens, drives) don’t clearly serve people who “want to make software”; suggestions that a title like “What is software?” might fit better.
  • Others argue the subtitle is about audience (software people) rather than purpose (not a how‑to on building software), and see no contradiction.
  • The table of contents placing “AI and ML” before “What is a byte?” is noted as funny and a hint that the book may be non-linear and browseable.

Design and Visuals

  • Very strong praise for the aesthetic: “stunning,” “coffee-table book” quality, reminiscent of “The Way Things Work” and other visual engineering references.
  • Multiple commenters say the illustrations and animations are the main draw and would justify purchase alone.
  • Interest in a meta-section on how the diagrams/animations are made; FAQ states they’re created by hand in Figma, which impresses many.

Usability and Accessibility

  • Significant criticism that the site prioritizes form over function:
    • Multi-column text is confusing on screens where both columns don’t fit; users must scroll back and forth.
    • Justified text is called hard to read; others disagree and like it, leading to a thread about typography and upcoming CSS hyphenation.
    • Constantly looping animations are praised for clarity but criticized as highly distracting, CPU/battery-unfriendly, and inaccessible for some (e.g., autistic users, people sensitive to motion).
    • Proposed compromise: respect prefers-reduced-motion while keeping loops for others.
    • On mobile, large vertical whitespace makes navigation feel sparse.

Content Status and Structure

  • Several people are confused that clicking table-of-contents items does nothing; it’s clarified in the FAQ that this is an announcement/landing page and no chapters are finished yet.
  • Some feel that “no content yet” should be made clearer above the fold.

Accuracy and Technical Depth

  • A few technical inaccuracies are flagged, e.g., describing capacitive touch as disturbing a “magnetic” field, and questions about hard drive diagrams.
  • These raise doubts for some about using it as a reference, though others still focus on its educational and inspirational value.

Desired Topics and Extras

  • Requested chapters include:
    • Microprocessors and microcontrollers
    • Storage types and filesystems
    • OS concepts (threads, scheduling, paging, coroutines)
    • Data structures (trees, graphs, queues, stacks)
    • Network packets (TCP/UDP/HTTP) with visual breakdowns
  • Some want inline links to deeper resources (e.g., for Gaussian blur) rather than relying on generic web search.