8 comments

  • Permit1 hour ago
    &gt; and done a high-level pass on the rest.<p>Why would I read your book if you have not read your book?<p>Edit: I now understand what is going on here. This is an attempt to promote Zenflow. The GitHub account (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;amoilanen&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;amoilanen&#x2F;</a>) is Anton Moilanen who is an employee at Zencoder, the creators of Zenflow.<p>The account (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=jsontwikkeling">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=jsontwikkeling</a>) was created 86 days ago the same day as this Show HN post was created: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46290617">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46290617</a><p>It would probably be worth the moderator&#x27;s time to see if this post was part of a coordinated upvote ring as well.
    • jsontwikkeling36 minutes ago
      As you can see I was never hiding and my identity can be viewed and verified quite openly<p>I just mentioned the tools I use normally and it is my personal project done on my personal time of which my employer is not aware.<p>I might not mention the tools I used but they did the bulk of the work so I thought appropriate to mention.<p>Promoting Zenflow or Claude Code was not my goal. They are mentioned purely for the attribution purposes
    • vova_hn21 hour ago
      Just ask an LLM summarize it for you, lol<p>What was the point of first asking an LLM to expand prompt&#x2F;&quot;specs&quot; into a book and then asking it to compress it back to a summary? Well, I&#x27;m glad you asked! To promote this Z*n tool, of course.
      • jsontwikkeling30 minutes ago
        It was not the goal and I was posting in my personal capacity. I just used it together with Claude Code on my personal project. Because I work with it regularly it is natural that I used it.<p>I wanted to mention the tools I used including Claude Code. I hope it does not seem that I am here to promote Anthropic tools as well?<p>I just thought it appropriate to mention for the correct attribution, because the heavy lifting was done by the tools, not by me
      • jsontwikkeling24 minutes ago
        The goal was to share the book which I finished and ask for review and feedback.<p>Feedback is clear, I should never had posted and will probably not post in the future.<p>Hopefully the book will be useful for those who find it, I will get feedback elsewhere and will finish reviewing it myself
    • jsontwikkeling1 hour ago
      It is your choice. I have read a good part of the book, also wrote a part of it and am in the process of finishing the review. The more reviews - the better. The book is officially in beta and this is fully transparent
      • bananamogul1 hour ago
        what kind of author releases about a book they themselves have not read? Could you possibly care less about your readers and your own work?
        • jsontwikkeling1 hour ago
          The main goal of posting early was to gather feedback and peer review as soon as possible. I hope it can become a collaborative effort with external contributions.<p>The book is still a work in progress, and I have tried to be transparent about that. If you have specific concerns about the quality or suggestions for improvement, I would genuinely appreciate hearing them.
          • sumeno50 minutes ago
            You shouldn&#x27;t ask other people for feedback before you have done the bare minimum of reading your &quot;own&quot; book
            • jsontwikkeling18 minutes ago
              Clear, sorry, my mistake. I just was excited to share and hoped it can be useful.<p>Though I genuinely wrote a substantial part of the book myself.<p>I will finish the review on Github in the coming days&#x2F;weeks and will hopefully get some collaborators there
        • bombcar1 hour ago
          At least he&#x27;s honest about it, the vast majority of AI people would just submit it as their own work having never read it at all.
          • Permit49 minutes ago
            He&#x27;s being dishonest. He&#x27;s attempting to promote Zenflow (a tool created by his employer Zencoder). He&#x27;s produced AI slop (that he has not even read!) as a vehicle to promote Zenflow and get it in front of eyeballs on HackerNews.
            • jsontwikkeling40 minutes ago
              I am just referencing the tools I used (also Claude Code, by the way) because the bulk of the work was done by them.<p>This is what I was taught: work should be attributed correctly. If I would not mention the tools it would seem if the book was written entirely by me which is not the case.<p>This is a book which was started by me, I did use the AI tools I normally use in my daily routine on my personal projects. They are secondary in this post though.<p>I posted in my personal capacity and my employer is not aware or connected to this - the book is entirely mine.<p>It is not AI slop. A large part of its content was written originally by me 10 years ago.<p>But if it has offended anyone and I should not had posted the work which I have not fully yet reviewed myself, then sorry
              • sumeno25 minutes ago
                How would you know whether or not it is AI slop, you haven&#x27;t reviewed it
                • jsontwikkeling15 minutes ago
                  Sorry, definitely my mistake for sharing too early.
  • tossandthrow2 hours ago
    This seems to be an entirely AI promoted post.<p>dang: Can we get stuff like this out?
    • jsontwikkeling2 hours ago
      It might seem so, but it is not an AI promoted post. The book was finished with the AI tools, but a bulk of it was written by myself plus the structure and direction.<p>And I am human, who first finished a similar course roughly 20 years ago, worked as a TA and taught students programming and algorithms
  • gausswho2 hours ago
    this is well structured and put together. i would think it serves as a good base for refreshing oneself on the fundamentals. and it has a satisfying bend towards being both concise and thorough.
  • Copyrightest2 hours ago
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  • BloodAndCode3 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • jsontwikkeling2 hours ago
      Great to hear that. I actually think TypeScript is very fit for the purpose, even better than Python (lacks types) or Java (bulkier).<p>Type signatures document contracts directly:<p><pre><code> export function rabinKarp(text: string, pattern: string): number[] </code></pre> Clear that it takes two strings and returns match positions. No separate explanation needed.<p>Interfaces model return types and ADTs cleanly:<p><pre><code> export interface ShortestPathResult&lt;T&gt; { dist: Map&lt;T, number&gt;; parent: Map&lt;T, T | undefined&gt;; } export function dijkstra&lt;T&gt;(graph: Graph&lt;T&gt;, source: T): ShortestPathResult&lt;T&gt; </code></pre> It&#x27;s also lightweight, flexible, has familiar C-like syntax, and unlike pseudocode — you can actually run everything.<p>Re: generics feeling awkward — in TypeScript they feel pretty natural. The type inference helps a lot, you rarely need to spell out type parameters at call sites.
  • useftmly2 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • jsontwikkeling2 hours ago
      Exactly - this is precisely why I built the project as an integrated repo centered around code and tests first, with the book as one of the produced artifacts rather than the other way around.<p>Having both an engineering and academic background, I felt there&#x27;s underappreciated potential in bringing software engineering best practices - tests, type contracts, CI - into an algorithms textbook. Most CS teaching treats code as illustration. I wanted it to be the source of truth.<p>And agreed on structural typing for graphs. TypeScript lets you define a Graph&lt;T&gt; interface and defer the representation choice, which maps very well to how the topic is actually taught - abstract properties first, concrete implementations second.
      • useftmly47 minutes ago
        That approach makes a lot of sense. Treating the code and tests as the source of truth feels much closer to how engineers actually learn and work.<p>The “textbook first, code later” model often makes it harder to experiment or verify ideas.
  • orkunk2 hours ago
    [flagged]