[HN Gopher] Stripe Press
___________________________________________________________________
Stripe Press
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 281 points
Date : 2021-10-05 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (press.stripe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (press.stripe.com)
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Book recommendations from a fintech company... ok, strange but
| cool I guess.
| PStamatiou wrote:
| Books they published!
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Ah that would be what I'm missing. But where does it say
| this?
| tims33 wrote:
| In the "Publisher" field here:
| https://www.amazon.com/Where-Flying-Car-Storrs-Hall-
| ebook/dp...
| runevault wrote:
| A useful note, the content of these books tend to be very good,
| but also the quality of the physical product is top notch while
| not costing top notch money. I own 3 of their books (Prince of
| Persia, Elegant Puzzle, and Learning to Learn) and they all
| just feel good in the hand on top of having good insights.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| My strongest recommendation for _Revolt of the Public_ as a text
| examining the effects of democratized media on the modern
| political process. The Stripe edition is beautifully-printed too.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| This book review[0] by ACX/SSC might be more value for the time
| at this point, because first paragraph:
|
| 'The book is about how social-media-connected masses are
| revolting against elites, but the revolt has moved forward so
| quickly that a lot of what Gurri considers wild speculation is
| now obvious fact. I picked up the book on its "accurately
| predicted the present moment" cred, but it predicted the
| present moment so accurately that it's barely worth reading
| anymore. It might as well just say "open your eyes and look
| around".'
|
| [0]https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-
| revolt...
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Having read the book and the essay on substack dot com, I
| still recommend the book.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I think Scott was looking at it from a too US-centric
| perspective and part of what made the book interesting was
| drawing connections between movements around the world.
| dnissley wrote:
| On top of that I would say he's also looking at it from a
| grey tribe[1] bubble. People in the red tribe and the blue
| tribe have analyzed the current situation from an
| ideological perspective and have missed the larger picture
| -- the analysis in this book is step 1 in disabusing people
| of the notion that this problem breaks down along purely
| political lines.
|
| 1 - Term taken from an earlier (and classic) essay of his:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
| anythin...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Change title to why this is relevant today: New Stripe Press site
| design
| Symmetry wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't click on the link
| initially because I'd been to their site just a few weeks ago.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Does the first book really blame, in part, "the suppression of
| cold fusion" for global economic stagnation?
| ipnon wrote:
| "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Hamming is like
| having the greatest doctoral advisor in your pocket. Any time I'm
| at a loss I open it up and find some sage wisdom to keep me
| going.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i have the prince of persia book and i absolutely LOVE it. it's
| so well done!
| dang wrote:
| A past thread:
|
| _Stripe Press_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17551687 -
| July 2018 (131 comments)
| pryelluw wrote:
| Site won't load on iOS 15.0.1 safari.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I saw nothing on firefox, console said WebGL is currently
| disabled. Don't think I'll enable it. ;-)
| interleave wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| Thank you so much for publishing/producing/making (?) 'We are as
| Gods' - I had of course read 'From Counter-Culture to
| Cyberculture' and 'What the Dormouse said' but not yet seen the
| movie.
|
| Learning about Stewart Brand's history helped me better
| understand and appreciate my personal story and my relationship
| with systems. I have an original 1969 Whole Earth Catalog! It's
| one of my most treasured possessions :D
| bodo11 wrote:
| Can you point me to a stream / site to buy the film "we are as
| gods"? I don't see any button on the the stripe press page nor
| anywhere else on the net.
| giacaglia wrote:
| The website looks amazing!
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Is there a way to order these books without using amazon.com?
| Here in Canada I'm not seeing a clear path to purchase. I've got
| a few Stripe Press books (all well-loved gifts) so I assume they
| exist in Canadian channels.
| avel wrote:
| Interesting. They used to have bundles of some Increment issues
| on a topic along with accompanying books, but they don't offer
| that any more.
| pm90 wrote:
| My first thought on reading this was that it would be a product
| that would enable journalists to setup their own media agency
| really quickly, allowing a fuckton of more local, digital native
| media to replace the print media that was killed by
| Facebook/Social Media.
|
| Now that would have been _really cool_.
| robtaylor wrote:
| the world needs this.
| bovermyer wrote:
| What would be involved in that?
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Twitter is already this.
| brockwhittaker wrote:
| Wow, the graphics on this site are beautiful and elegantly
| polished.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The most impressive part is that it doesn't do this at the
| expense of compatibility. The page is reasonably navigable in a
| text-based browser like w3m.
|
| It's perhaps not the easiest to navigate that way, but that's a
| complaint that could be levied in browsers with javascript and
| renderings as well.
| rpadovani wrote:
| They seem very high quality, however here in Germany they cost so
| much!
|
| E.g. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Will-Larson/dp/1732265186, 46.70
| euros against $23 on amazon.com!
| ketzo wrote:
| Worth highlighting here: Stripe also publishes a software
| engineering magazine called Increment [1] that puts out some
| _really_ high-quality articles -- on a different level than any
| of your standard "corporate eng blog" kind of stuff (and I love
| those!).
|
| They focus their issues on different engineering topics: May 2021
| was "Containers," August 2020 was "APIs," Feb 2019 was
| "Internationalization," you get the idea. Can't recommend it
| enough. Worth scrolling through the topics to one that hits close
| to your interests.
|
| Nearest to my own heart is the "Frontend" issue [2] -- every
| article is fucking _fascinating_ , and one of my favorites is a
| deep dive from Evan You, the author of Vue, about the decision to
| do a full rewrite for Vue 3.
|
| I am _endlessly_ impressed by the quality of writing that comes
| out of Stripe.
|
| [1] https://increment.com
|
| [2] https://increment.com/frontend
| strawberrysauce wrote:
| Any idea what CMS increment uses? Their site is very
| lightweight and served from S3, but I'm curious how they might
| be generating it.
| tomovo wrote:
| https://cmsdetect.com says it's Contentful.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Wow I am so sad I am just learning about this now - and finding
| out it's ending this year.
| zrail wrote:
| (disclaimer: Stripe employee, not on the Increment or Press
| teams but have contributed as a technical reviewer)
|
| I also love Increment dearly. In case you missed it, the recent
| Mobile issue was the penultimate issue.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/IncrementMag/status/1432799936488...
| pm90 wrote:
| Why are they shutting it down? Is it spinning out as an
| independent thing?
| wdb wrote:
| I wish they would in-depth write about how they handled API
| versioning at Stripe (e.g. docs, code wise etc) :)
| ezekg wrote:
| Yeah, IIRC we got that one blog post and I've been itching
| for more ever since.
| rpadovani wrote:
| > the recent Mobile issue was the penultimate issue.
|
| Nooo :( I'm glad they will do the collector box tho, I think
| I will take one!
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Sounds like a Palladium Mag of software engineering. Much love
| for publications like that.
|
| We need more long form and high quality publications.
|
| I posit a stack consisting of Substack posts, quality
| magazines, academic papers as the optimum knowledge supply.
| taylorhou wrote:
| just spent $230 for all issues to date T_T
| nindalf wrote:
| I was about to, but they mentioned they're releasing a
| collector's box set of 19 issues in November. I figure if I'm
| paying international shipping I might as well wait.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I am not surprised in the least, I think extremely highly of
| Patrick the CEO as he is very well read and imo is probably one
| of the most rounded leaders in tech. Just look at his booklist:
| https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf
|
| I assume this thoughtfulness matriculates down the organization
| where these high quality write ups originate.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Thank you, I didn't know about increment.
| lquist wrote:
| I've got a bit of a hack when it comes to sussing out which
| business books are the best. I look at the endorsement quotes and
| check if they are quotes from practitioners or quotes from other
| authors. 90%+ of the time they are from other authors and I know
| that likelihood of quality is low. On the other hand, quotes from
| practitioners (and especially ones successful in their field) are
| worth their weight in gold. Stripe Press books pass this test
| surprisingly often.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Not gonna lie, if it wasn't for the comments, I wouldn't of
| clicked this link (I'm glad I did though!). Honestly thought the
| "press" prefix to be corporate announcements.
| dshep wrote:
| Sweet website, been meaning to pick up a copy of the Dream
| Machine...
| timClicks wrote:
| One of the things I have yet to understand is how their books are
| so cheap. They are hardback on high quality stock.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The one I got has the print slowly falling off the cover, so
| maybe that's one of the things they try to save money on? Or
| maybe I was just unlucky, I'll still buy some of the other
| books they have put out.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Big MIT press vibes. I love this so much.
| buro9 wrote:
| Highly recommend the books here, I only have a couple but they
| are what I want books to be: high quality content, in a high
| quality packaging. The paper is beautiful, the fonts lovely, the
| diagrams clean and informative. And the final cherry on top,
| they're not ugly if left out (so many books on business and
| engineering just look ugly!).
| criddell wrote:
| I bought _The Dream Machine_ ended up looking for an electronic
| version because the type in the book was too small.
|
| I highly recommend the book because it really is a beautiful
| object, but if your eyesight ain't what it used to be, read it
| on your Kindle. Either way, read it. I'm pretty sure if you
| like HN, you will enjoy the book.
| guidoism wrote:
| Also inexpensive for that kind of quality.
| nathanyz wrote:
| A highly curated list of books like this is awesome coming from
| Stripe.
|
| Wouldn't mind seeing a similar type of curated release from First
| Round(1) who also releases great info for anyone working or
| founding startups.
|
| (1) https://review.firstround.com/
| jonplackett wrote:
| Anyone know what UI framework / stack / ? they are using for
| this?
| dorianmariefr wrote:
| HTML / CSS / JS :) seems like it's powered by a static server
| called mkt-statics-srv
| pen2l wrote:
| Freaking Stripe, man.
|
| Why does Stripe, a financial services company, continue having
| the most interesting UI on the web? Those sexy svg gradient
| backgrounds, those color palletes that go together so well that I
| don't see anywhere else, every logo and every icon and every font
| choice so thoroughly thought out. What attracts UI/UX talent of
| this caliber to Stripe?
| scotu wrote:
| Sibling comments are saying money, but that's not the whole
| reason imho. The mere act of putting out that kind of quality
| artifact into the world attracts the talent that can produce
| that kind of artifact (or in fact, even just talent that wants
| to learn/get to that level).
|
| Obviously without the money incentive said virtuous circle
| could break down in an instant.
| marban wrote:
| Money buys a lot of talent; and in Stripe's case taste as well.
| pc wrote:
| If money could buy taste, a lot of the world would look
| better than it does. Culture isn't a function of dollars, and
| we're very lucky to have many people at Stripe who just
| really, really want to do great work.
|
| (There is proof that significant financial resources aren't
| needed to do great work in a lot of personal websites. Most
| recent example I came across: https://bruno-simon.com.)
| atonse wrote:
| Bloody hell (the only valid reaction to this site, IMO),
| Bruno Simon will never be unemployed for the rest of his
| life.
|
| Thanks for posting this.
| not_math wrote:
| Look at most of the biggest banks' website and their UI/UX is
| not even in the same league. I feel like stripe understood
| that their main clients are web geeks, so they are ready to
| pay the price and give the ressources needed for a good
| website.
| mattsoldo wrote:
| Money helps, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient.
|
| I've been at a company that many considered to have excellent
| design and that received a lot of attention here (Heroku).
| There was a culture that permeated the company around
| beautiful design and what I would call "maker excellence". It
| was a place where people who liked building great things
| (both engineers and designers) felt at home.
| pc wrote:
| Yes, well said. Heroku was an inspirational product when we
| were starting out.
| jsjj wrote:
| "but it doesn't work with JS disabled in my text-based
| browser!" -- all of HN
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I beg to differ with an extreme contrarian view of design. I
| mostly belong in the International Style camp and I see
| everything through the lens of Uber-functionalism and judge
| that decoration is a crime. Stripe camps out on the decoration
| side of things.
|
| I do find it sexy and bedazzling but that's exactly why it is
| not interesting to me. Also Stripe's taste is copied en-made to
| the point where it has become a self-propelling cliche in
| design. A good problem to have I suppose!
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Can you give some examples of "Stripe camps out on the
| decoration side of things" ?
|
| From what I've seen and used - Stripe also focuses big on
| usability and it appears also focuses heavily on developer
| experience.
|
| What sites do you prefer that align more with the uber-
| functionalism lens?
| mindhunter wrote:
| https://twitter.com/bdc was one of the first designing
| developers there. One of the best of his kind!
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I am often pulled towards this comment for an article that
| asks, "Are Designers Crazy?" [0]
|
| """
|
| No, designers aren't crazy. You just don't understand a very
| fundamental concept of design. It even applies to engineering.
| It's okay--many people have the same frustrations as you do.
|
| But those who care about the details achieve truly high quality
| results overall. It extends to all areas of the design, not
| just to the parts you can't see.
|
| In the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," there's a scene in a
| dark room where Roger Rabbit (an animated character) flies
| across the room, knocks a hanging lamp around, and the lighting
| becomes so dynamic that all the shadows move around including
| the animated character's shadow. Here's the scene in question:
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUPwsD64GI
|
| This was such a small detail that it would have been forgivable
| if the animators had left it out entirely: if they had not
| moved the lamp, kept the shadow steady, no one would have
| really noticed the difference. It would have been 100 times
| easier to animate and the effect wouldn't really have been that
| different.
|
| But they did it anyway. The term was later coined, and "bump
| the lamp" is used throughout Disney (and probably other
| organizations) to mean something akin to "go the extra mile"--
| but I see it as having a special significance to design.
|
| You're right, most people won't notice. By that logic, you
| could cut corners a lot of other places too. You could be lax
| about button colors matching exactly, or per-pixel sharpness on
| the map and buttons. No one would probably notice.
|
| But if you go for every detail like it was the most important
| detail, you have the possibility of reaching a level of design
| quality that is superlative, and some people will notice.
| Others will not notice directly, but will see that the piece
| exudes style and quality subconsciously, due to the attention
| to small details. If you carry this into other areas of your
| work--programming, customer service, market strategy,
| marketing, and more--then you have a chance to create something
| of true quality.
|
| If you don't pay attention to detail at that level, well, you
| might have the chance to actually get something done. Yes, it's
| a balance, like everything else. But you have to know that it
| won't be quite as good, and understand that yes, you are
| sacrificing something, even if you can't see it.
|
| """
|
| In the same way, Stripe creates a superlative product and
| branding site, and in the mere act of doing so, it attracts
| those who also wish to create such products. It may seem high
| effort for those who may not seem to care, but for those who
| do, they immediately understand the value.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002262
| amelius wrote:
| Did you actually like that "UI"?
|
| I personally was annoyed that I couldn't open the books.
|
| And rendering books in 3D is nothing more than a visual
| gimmick, not really a UI in any way.
|
| It also reeks of skeomorphism which is nothing new and was
| certainly not invented by Stripe.
|
| If Amazon presented their book catalogue like this, users would
| walk away. And to test this statement, let's see if Amazon
| copies this (I bet not).
| ksec wrote:
| I think of Stripe as Apple on the Web, that really cares about
| UI and UX as well as DX.
|
| Attention to Details matters. Taste Matters. Unfortunately it
| is not something money can buy.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Money
| pen2l wrote:
| Can't just be money. I was trying to find details on Pixel
| phone last night and saw Google's page for it, it was really
| bad. Stripe does pretty elaborate and new stuff (like those
| 3d books) and pulls it off flawlessly every single time.
| samaman wrote:
| I think that's their whole business model really, a beautiful
| skin and api on top of a very boring process that makes
| developers want to use it. Stripe itself doesn't really handle
| a lot of the banking work and uses Evolve Bank (like basically
| every fintech company in America) and Goldman Sachs to actually
| do that work https://stripe.com/treasury. Not saying that
| itself doesn't take a long time to develop in terms of
| relationships, but its obviously much faster than actually
| going to FINRA and the US Comptroller and making a new bank.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, this is all 70s style mainframe/dumb terminal programs
| with a nice GUI layer on top to make it look new and exciting
| and innovative.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Isn't there actually just a tonne of complexity with handling
| payments once you leave the United States? In many countries
| there are preferred payment methods that aren't just "enter
| card number, expiry, and cvv" and users are going to
| expect/hope to see their preferred method (and perhaps a way
| to get to it if the interface guesses incorrectly because eg
| they are on a vpn or an expat with banking relationships in
| their home country.) And then there are all sorts of
| 'security' things where the user must be redirected in many
| ways. Now _multiply_ the complexity in payment options by the
| complexity in payment flows: maybe someone may get charged a
| variable amount up to some limit in the future (eg like a
| hotel or car rental) or maybe you want recurring payments
| (and the customer may be accustomed to using a different
| method for these) or maybe there is some other kind of flow I
| hadn't thought of--businesses are quite diverse. And that
| ignores the complications of local laws and international
| money movement and foreign exchange and, of course, tax.
|
| I think there are a few possible definitions for the word
| 'boring'
|
| 1. Things you can't talk about at an ordinary dinner party--
| math is boring
|
| 2. Things that are mundane or pedestrian--checkout at a
| supermarket is boring
|
| 3. Things that are simple but tedious--transferring your
| contacts from your Rolodex to your mobile telephone is boring
|
| I think that because some definitions apply to stripe for the
| user or developer (definition 2, probably 1) it is easy to
| assume that definition 3 applies to the front end or the
| system as a whole. And surely it is a success of stripe to
| make their business look so trivial that people assume it
| _is_ trivial. But I don't really think that's true.
| jjice wrote:
| Highly recommend The Dream Machine so far. I'm about half way
| through and it is a _dense_ wealth of knowledge in early
| computing history. Incredibly well researched. The book has
| larger than average dimensions and smaller than average font size
| which means the 500ish pages is even more than one may expect.
| The way some topics are introduced is great too. There will be 6
| pages leading up and talking about a machine, only to reveal that
| it was the PDP-1 (I got absolutely giddy when I read that part).
| Waldrop is a great writer.
| jbschirtzs wrote:
| Now it is starting to make some sense:
| https://www.jbschirtzinger.com/post/stripe/
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| "Where is My Flying Car" is very good. The author is a bit
| overoptimistic IMO in his assessment of technological
| capabilities, but it has a great overview of attempted aviation
| innovations that I've never seen anywhere else.
|
| There is a different book also called "The Big Score"[0] (not the
| one put out by Stripe Press), that is about a mining billionaire,
| Robert Friedland. He was Steve Jobs' roommate in college, it's
| alleged that some of Friedland's charisma rubbed off on Jobs.
| Interesting book for people who want to read about how startups
| work in the mining industry.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Score-Robert-Friedland-
| Voiseys/dp...
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