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by sosuke 4140 days ago
Having played the "You Don't Know Jack" PC game from 1995 I found the title playful. From your preface I see you'll be doing exactly what I wanted from a book with this title. Going into all the areas I never would in a programming language. Not just how but why.

I agree with the GP though, on feeling some fatigue around people telling me I'm doing something wrong. Eating food, reading a book, tying my shoes, putting on a shirt. Anyhow it seems like you've just touched on that area a bit for this person. Experts don't like for Dummies books, not because they are rubbish, which they might be, but because owning or reading them visibly puts into question their knowledge and challenges their self image. In the same way someone might find your title a challenge to their knowledge, instead of seeing that you're interested in highlighting often overlooked things about JS.

For the love of God please don't put a giant headed person on your cover though. I've come to terms with every other book series having a positive quality with the exception of "Head First" and their distorted human cover photos. /rant

We all have our ticks when it comes to books and advertising around things we love.

1 comments

> For the love of God please don't put a giant headed person on your cover though

These are what the covers of all the books in the series look like:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026327.do

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side note: my kickstarter for the books, 2 years ago, playfully used the bald head image to catch people's attention (never the intended branding). I soon afer got a friendly lawyer takedown notice from the folks who own the game. We worked it out, and the new branding was born. :)