I was a mainframe developer who was retreaded as a Unix SysAdmin and
worked at that for 10+ years and two companies. Maybe some of you have
the kind of memories that can remember all the options for all the *nix
commands. I was constantly checking details of a command that I hadn't used recently. Yes, the man pages are wonderful, but often as not
they told me more than I wanted to know about a command. Once I
found the O'Reilly Unix in a Nutshell, I seldom used them. The O'Reilly commands section had the commands, concise
explanations, and examples. The sections in
the Linux book about the boot loaders and how to work with them were a
great help when I branched into multi-boot PCs.
Maybe the difference is in developers writing C code and SysAdmins
poking around in the system, checking on things, and writing Korn or
Bash scripts (trying to keep systems up and the developers under
control).
-mj-
Joshua Zeidner wrote:
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Alex Dean <
alex@crackpot.org> wrote:
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.
yes, but don't you work for a newspaper? ;)
-jmz
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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