[onion2k]

for a technical work, you would hope the publisher assigned some people to check the work

That's what technical reviewers do. I did it back in the early 2000s. You get sent a copy of a few chapters, and it's your job to review the code and explanations to find errors. It doesn't pay very well though - you get your name in the front, and a free copy of the book, but nothing much else.

[jedberg]

I did technical reviewing for a while. What frustrated me most was when I would say, "this isn't right, it's more nuanced than that" and they would come back and say, "this is a book for beginners so we'll just leave it the way it is".

So now my name is attached to incorrect information, and occasionally someone will message me and tell me why I was wrong and I have to message them back and say, "well I told them to fix it but they ignored me".

[astangl]

I had this experience, too, after tech reviewing quite a few books. I quickly got to the point where I didn't want to even look at the final product, because of all the pointed-out flaws that would still remain, and I'd know the book could have been so much better, except that some editor was in a rush, or lazy.

[commandlinefan]

> That's what technical reviewers do

Well... in theory they should be. I published a book a while back through a publisher, and they assigned me a copy editor and a technical editor. The copy editor was amazing - it was clear she didn't understand any of the technical details, but she spotted flow errors and minor grammatical mistakes in dense technical prose. The technical editor, on the other hand, seemed to have (maybe) skimmed over the content and his only feedback was that he didn't like my writing style very much and left it up to me to verify all of the technical content. I did take it seriously, though, and I am proud to say that very few technical errors have been reported.

[quickthrower2]

I like the idea that all the code in the book goes through a CI so any edited get compiled and unit tested. Certain words and phrases could be given “type annotations” to check consistent use of language.

Not to replace human review but should catch a lot of mistakes