On May 4, 2009, at 7:23 PM, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Craig White <[email protected]> wrote:fact is, those books barely equip you to pass a job interview let alone actually build software. At this point, they act primarily as totems of technical knowledge and tend to help convince oblivious managers that someone is technically knowledgeable.
Well, I work at home, and my boss never sees my desk, but I have plenty of books lying around. I find I use them most when I'm first learning a subject, and less and less after that. Overall, my experience has been that O'Reilly books have had the best staying power (as references, not just step-by-step introductions) of any of the various technical books I've owned.
The O'Reilly JavaScript book is the single book where I've actually purchased the updated edition of a book I already own. It's excellent, and having all that trivial detail collected in one place is a great supplement to the various bookmarks I have on the subject. Their book on Ruby is written in fantastic (you might say excruciating, in some places) detail. I very seriously doubt you could collect such a comprehensive resource online without a massive amount of effort. $40 (minus the 40% PLUG discount!) was well worth the money. I'm currently fully employed as a Ruby/Rails developer, and I can say without hesitation that O'Reilly books were part of getting me there. I'm sure I could have done it without the books, but having them made the experience much more pleasant. I read the thing nearly cover to cover before really doing much at the computer. Scoff if you will, but I say to each his own.
I will say I have noticed the quality of their bindings seems to less in the last year or two. I have several with cracked spines, and that never seemed to happen back in the day. But overall a book purchase is still something which makes sense to me when I'm first getting into a totally new technology or language.
I guess I don't understand where all the virulence is coming from here? You're making a very sweeping generalization about most every developer who uses books. Why? I get that having a rack of books which don't get read is lame and poser-like, but why do you think that's the main purpose for published technical books nowadays?
In general, the print world is in crisis because their value proposal is quickly being invalidated.
I don't think that's true. The value of a book is in the editing as much as the author's copy. As I've said, I feel like O'Reilly books in general score very well on this scale. It wouldn't bother me if someone were to disagree with this assertion, but I don't understand the disdain for print you are be showing.
alex
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