[sillysaurus3]

Sad to say the book isn't on Library Genesis, so you'll have to drop $40 if you want the knowledge. http://libgen.io/search.php?req=little+typer

Also Library Genesis is amazing: http://libgen.io/search.php?req=knuth

It's everything I dreamed of when I was a kid. I used to spend hours at the local library scouring through crummy "Learn C++ in 24 hours" type books.

http://custodians.online/ is worth a read too.

[xevb3k]

I feel like there’s so much to say about this comment, that I don’t even know where to start.

So firstly I agree, $40 seems like a lot. I personally couldn’t justify it at the moment. Particularly when the reproduction cost is nearly zero.

But $40 also doesn’t seem like a lot to pay for a book that will probably not sell more than a few thousand copies. Most likely revenue generated won’t fully cover the time and effort required to create such a book.

But... the author is also a professor at MIT. I feel like if this work wasn’t somewhat publicly funded, it really should have been.

In the end, I’m left morally confused. But it feels like something is wrong in the world when a book like this is available only to a select few, when for the same capital outlay it could be available to everybody.

[billsix]

> In the end, I’m left morally confused. But it feels like something is wrong in the world when a book like this is available only to a select few, when for the same capital outlay it could be available to everybody.

Only to a select few? For $40? The book costs less than most console video games.

[xevb3k]

When I grew up, we never ate at a restaurant... just would have been an extravagant expense. My parents probably earned <15000USD combined. This book would have been far too expensive to consider.

This is in the western world... imagine how many people in the world can’t afford this book. On a global scale... very few people could afford this book (or a 40USD video game).

It makes me kind of sad that you’d so casually suggest that this is not the case. Makes me think that perhaps people in the tech world don’t have a great understanding of how poor many people are...

[billsix]

there is an extraordinary amount of freely available content online for people who want to learn, improve themselves, and to make more money.

To those who cannot afford it, here’s 2.5 years of my side work for free http://billsix.github.io/bug

[xevb3k]

Of course there is. But that’s neither what you said, nor the topic being discussed.

What you said is more than a select few could afford a $40 book.

The topic being discussed is, the morality of charging so much/piracy.

Good work plugging your github though!

[billsix]

More than a select few can afford this book

[sillysaurus3]

Another way of phrasing that: The book costs as much as work that took dozens of people years to make.

Also if you were to somehow poll everyone reading this and ask "Did you buy this book?" you'd get some number, x. But if the book were priced at $5, then $5y would be much greater than $40x.

I bought a bamboo fineline pencil for $50 the other day. It's a tool that will serve me for at least a year. It's unclear whether this book would.

I want work like this to exist, and for the author to be rewarded for it. But ultimately, in an era when words are infinitely and instantaneously copyable, the economic value of words seems to drop.

Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?

[mjfl]

The harm is less people writing books like this in the future. Every dollar this book gets in revenue not only goes partly to the author, but goes into the record as profits for that "genre" of books. Every dollar of revenue for this book increases the value of the advance the author receives for the next book, increases the probability that another author writing the same kind of material will get accepted for publication. The harm you create by stealing this book is that the market for that knowledge is destroyed.

[sillysaurus3]

Technology destroyed the market, not users of it.

I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.

[billsix]

> I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.

Because reasonable adults are paying for content which they want, directly via movie tickets, indirectly via e.g. Netflix and Spotify.

[mjfl]

Content is stolen if and only if a user tries to steal it, so I don't understand how you are absolving them of responsibility. People pay for Netflix and I guarantee you that if people stopped paying for it, Netflix originals would stop being made.

[billsix]

> Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?

As a working adult, time spent reading a book is both more limited and more valuable than $40. If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, why is it worth your time stealing and reading it?

Although it was an unpopular opinion at the time, I agree with Metallica's outspoken moral opposition to Napster circa 2000.

[xevb3k]

The arguments you make could equally well be applied to libraries.

Libraries “steal” money from authors by making books more freely available, in largely the same way that piracy does.

They also make books available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

[billsix]

Reductio ad absurdum.

[bigpicture]

> But... the author is also a professor at MIT. I feel like if this work wasn’t somewhat publicly funded, it really should have been.

This is published by MIT press, but the author (Friedman) is a professor at Indiana University.

[djur]

I would like to see more publicly funded, freely available educational material out there, but it seems worth pointing out that MIT is a private university.

[alew1]

It is, but the research that happens there is still funded in large part by public grants.

[mjfl]

It took a lot of work for the author to draft this. Would it kill you to compensate them for it?

[hackermailman]

The knowledge is freely available, here's Dan Licata giving an introduction to Dependent Types for functional programmers https://youtu.be/LXvP1A97oAM

Even though watching that, I probably think I understand Dependent Types then I'll read the Little Typer and discover my intuition was wrong like when I read the Seasoned Schemer and thought I already knew everything there was to know about the concept of higher order functions.

[mi_lk]

Sad because it's not available for free? What is this attitude?

At least local libraries actually buy the book to support the authors.

[Hates_]

Seems like libgen is blocked in the UK. I get redirected to http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/

[CuriousCosmic]

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ seems to work fine

[anothergoogler]

The book didn't materialize from thin air, the authors are even named on its cover.

[adamnemecek]

It came out today.

[deanmen]

According to WorldCat Library search it's not even in libraries other than Library of Congress and "College of Western Idaho". So it is probably not popular enough to be uploaded to a pirate site either. In fact it just came out on 18 September, so in order for a copy to be uploaded anywhere someone would have had to buy it and then immediately scan it, or the authors would have to put a draft copy on their website.

[snpriyanshu]

I would recommend you to shop from used book stores like thriftbooks.com. I got the knuth's books for like $30(3 volumes) and many more.

[sriram_malhar]

As an author of a book on which I worked incredibly hard, FUCK you. If you want it so bad, buy it. Or wait a few years, buy it used. Or borrow it from a library. Don't fucking steal it.

Carpenters and other craftspeople who earn far less than the denizens of Hacker News buy whatever they need to further their business. They don't steal others' tools.

[sillysaurus3]

I'd be happy to debate, if you're interested. But in the meantime it appears that the anger is misplaced; direct it at the fact that we have this wonderful tool that destroys class barriers and makes knowledge free to all.

You act as if I have $40. Would it surprise you to learn my power was cut off within the last few months?

Another point: "Stealing" implies something was lost. The words are still there, even if I have copied them.

The game industry and the iPhone app store have proven that when you price something closer to $1, it will generate exponentially more revenue than $40.

[sriram_malhar]

My anger isn't misdirected. It is directed exactly at this sentiment of yours: "The words are still there". It is the same whether I came up with a new magic trick, or a song, or a film. Don't fucking steal it because you have this wonderful tool called "copy" that "destroys class barriers". There is plenty of stuff on the internet (mine included) that people have chosen to put up for free; go use those. Or wait 10 years. The words will still be there, and you can get it much cheaper.

There was a lot of energy put behind those words, and I expect to get paid a modest sum for it. The means of knowledge transmission aren't free, just as you discovered that while a river wants to be free, the mechanism of converting it to useful energy and transmitting it to you isn't free.

[sillysaurus3]

People put a lot of energy into programming languages, but they don't expect to get paid anything for it. Why is it different when it comes to publishing a book?

That may sound like a dismissive question, but it's at the crux of our disagreement. If we can resolve that, we might be able to see eye to eye.

[sriram_malhar]

I'd hazard that a very large fraction of people who work on open PLs and open operating systems get paid --and expect to get paid -- for the effort they put into that project; take Golang, Rust, Linux, Kotlin, Java/JVM, Scala, Haskell, OCaml, Swift and so on. These are not written by homeless people. Try telling Rob Pike that he's not going to get paid for the ten years he spent on Go, and that he would only get paid for his other contributions to Google.

Further, it is an author's prerogative (whether that author is a company or an individual) to set the terms of the pricing. As a consumer you can choose to accept it and pay the price, or come up with an alternative model (like iTunes or the App Store) that changes the market.

I resent it intensely that after putting my own money and time and effort into a project (took a full year off a job), somebody just pirates it so easily. And then attempts to claim moral high ground with weasel phrases like "knowledge wants to be free" and "class barriers".

[sillysaurus3]

If I understand your position correctly, you feel that even if someone does not have $40 or would not have paid $40 for something that can be freely copied, it is both immoral and unethical to ignore the author's wishes and copy it anyway. Even though you as the author are unaffected by this action. You also feel that it's justifiable to seek out people who do this and tell them that they should not do this, i.e. how to live their life.

Is that an accurate summary? I am trying to respond to the strongest possible interpretation of what you're saying.

What is the difference between someone doing this, which is an illegal victimless crime, and recreational drug use, which is also an illegal victimless crime? Why is one immoral and unethical, but not the other? Furthermore, why is it justifiable to believe that it's an important right to be able to ingest whatever you want into your body as long as you're not harming anyone else? And are you sure the same argument doesn't apply to this case?

[grzm]

> "People put a lot of energy into programming languages, but they don't expect to get paid anything for it. Why is it different when it comes to publishing a book?"

The difference is what the people who choose to do the work expect to get out of it. There are people who work on programming languages (or software) that have commercial licenses. That's their choice. Choosing to ignore their choice, to subvert the terms on which they choose to offer the fruits of their labor, is wrong.

If you can convince them to offer their work under other terms, great. Until then, respect the terms the authors (of books, languages, and software) have chosen.

[djur]

> The game industry and the iPhone app store have proven that when you price something closer to $1, it will generate exponentially more revenue than $40.

This may be true for mass-market, high-volume products like mobile games, (although even there the real money is in in-app purchases). It is not necessarily true for special-interest, low-volume products like this book. In order for it to be true, you need to assume that over 40 times as many people will buy the book at $1 as will buy it at $40. Frankly, the audience for this book is so narrow that I suspect that they would eventually get three times as many free downloads as they will get sales at $40.

[vnorilo]

Ok, so digital scarcity is engineered, not real, because scarcity makes our economic system work. However, I don't think anyone has come up with a viable post-scarcity model. In some cases like mobile apps and steam sales, big discounts can increase volume to the point where the economic equation works. Sadly, I don't think a book on dependent types is really amenable to that scenario.

[billsix]

> Would it surprise you to learn my power was cut off

Passive verbs are weak (Mistakes were made, versus I made a mistake). You failed to pay your electric bill.

[bordercases]

It'll happen.