Feedback wanted: Docker for Rails Developers book

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12093091

by robise • 10 years ago

2 4 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I’d love to get some help. I’m working on a new book: “Docker for Rails Developers”, but I want to make sure I’m covering the things that people really want to know.

If you’ve heard of Docker, or even dabbled with it, but aren’t using it regularly, I’d love to get your thoughts. I’ve written a tiny survey (only 1 question and should take seconds). I’d really appreciate it if you’d share your thoughts: http://bit.ly/29FPPdz

Also, if you’re experienced with Docker, I’d love to hear from you with any tips/secrets/best practices for using it with Ruby apps/Microservices in either dev or prod environments (or both). You can reply here, or dockerforrails@therocketfuel.com.

Thanks so much.

p.s. I’ve thrown up a minimal landing page at http://DockerForRailsDevelopers.com where you can sign up for occasional progress updates.

brudgers2• 10 years ago

Some advice:

+ My understanding is that the Hacker News ranking algorithm penalizes posts that aren't links to keep it from being used as a blog. So it might be better to write up a blog post about the book and submit that instead.

+ My observation is that book authors who write useful informative blog posts about their topic [rather than obvious promotional collateral] tend to be better received by the HN community, though like everything else, those posts stand I high chance of passing mostly unnoticed.

+ My observation is that external surveys rarely receive much consideration from the HN community relative to interesting blog posts.

+ Samples preceding the email harvesting would probably stand a better chance of peeking the vistor's interest in the book...showing potential readers that the book is worth reading is worth considering.

Good luck.

robise• 10 years ago

Thanks for your thoughts - I appreciate it.

Yep, I take your point. This is my first time with this so still very much finding my way. :)

I'm still in very early stages, so I was after some early feedback though to make sure I'm not "writing blind" and just guessing what people what to know about.

But I think you're right... some informative blog posts are probably the way to go.

Thanks again.

brudgers2• 10 years ago

I'm probably biased since I can't help but type, but writing and getting feedback is how I seem to improve my writing. As for writing blind, a blog post is sort of a "minimum viable product".

netskrill• 10 years ago

study your competition: https://leanpub.com/rails-on-docker

use a complex rails app, one that uses redis/sidekiq. how to handle logging when running multiple instances of the rails app.

dockerizing the CI pipeline using jenkins...etc.