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.

[1] https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-way-things-work-newly-revise...

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.

The author should make a meta-entry about how he makes the (insanely beautiful) diagrams in the book (ideally walking through the process).

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)

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.

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.

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?

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.

Nice landing page, but I'm confused. The header is about software, but many diagrams are about hardware.

Looks like form-over-function to me. Cool looks, little content.

  When your finger gets close to the [touch] screen it causes a disturbance in the *magnetic* field that the electrodes sense.

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.

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?

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.

How old is this? Copyright at the bottom of the page says "1990".

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>.

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?

nice, but spotted several inaccuracies on the landing page. perhaps not the best reference.

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.

This is awesome. Reminds me of that book "How Things Work" that breaks down the everyday item into understandable pieces

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':

https://typefully.com/DanHollick

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.

Guess we are judging this book by the cover

looks great, i'd definitely pay for a coffee table style version of a book like this!

On my old phone it was a smooth and stable experience. I really liked it.

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

Exceptional landing page, very exciting project.

the design is really cool, but the two columns are really confusing on a screen that is not tall enough to fully contain them

So.... none of the chapters are available?

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!

Very cool resource!

Honestly you had me at the graphics, really neat.

Amazing design! Just joined the mailing list

Gorgeous UI

Really rad!

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.

wow, excellent job here!