# Inference Engineering 3 Hacker News commenters recommended Inference Engineering and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended as a free, practical guide to running AI models in production, grounded in real experience. Critics say some questions are opinion rather than fact and one chart has problems. ## Why people recommend it - Worth owning in hardcover (1 comments): "I would have held out for a (hard to get) hardcover copy of Inference Engineering" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49720263)) - Practical lessons from production experience (1 comments): "based on our experience running open-source frontier models at scale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50297927)) ## What people warn about - Some questions are opinion, not fact (1 comments): "several of the questions were opinion rather than factual" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49501349)) - Roofline chart on page 63 has problems (1 comments): "The roofline chart on page 63 has some problems." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49369323)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Linux From Scratch by the LFS Project](https://hackerapproved.com/p/linux-from-scratch.md): 72 recommend - [Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/commander-keen.md): 13 recommend - [Offline password cracking book by Bojta](https://hackerapproved.com/p/offline-password-cracking-book.md): 10 recommend - [FreeBSD Handbook by FreeBSD Documentation Project](https://hackerapproved.com/p/freebsd-handbook.md): 9 recommend - [WebRTC for the Curious by Sean DuBois](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webrtc-for-the-curious.md): 5 recommend ## Where to get it - [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Inference+Engineering&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Inference Engineering", https://hackerapproved.com/p/inference-engineering/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).