On May 4, 2009, at 7:23 PM, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Craig White <craigwhite@azapple.com>
> 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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