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Do you still read technical books? Do you buy hardcopy at book store? I often notice that a lot of the books even at local Barnes and Noble are quite stale.
Nah, get all the codez I need on QA. 
I agree, miss all the stuff that BN had on the shelves. Guess it is putting them out of business too. Sad.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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theoldfool wrote: miss all the stuff that BN had on the shelves.
Yeah, I like amazon a lot, but the local B&N is a special place and I hope they don't begin to fail.
B&N has to have so much stock on the shelves, it's got to be difficult. Tech books have such a short shelf life I'm almost amazed they keep many of them at all.
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raddevus wrote:
Do you still read technical books?
Yes, but not for finding the answer to a question/problem. I buy and read them much like any other story book, front to back, to see what the author has done. Sometimes seeing their project/code samples gives me an idea on something that I may not have thought of before. YMMV.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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David Crow wrote: I buy and read them much like any other story book, front to back, to see what the author has done.
That's the way I prefer to read tech books too. That's also why specific publishers and authors are best...because they tell the story of the technology. Others may just be quickly documenting things and they tend to jump around a lot.
The best books really give a context of the technology and how it works.
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raddevus wrote: It's good but only if you're in the mood for slow type of philosophical thinking about coding.
Books are great for explaining topics that are too big for a forum-post.
Having reviewed manuscripts for Manning, I'd also like to point out that there's more eyes checking the content than your regular forum-post; the content has been verified and villified a few times, before it goes to print.
Also still maintain a personal library; can't remember everything I read, so it is nice to be able to look up a(n) (anti)pattern for reference.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Having reviewed manuscripts for Manning, I'd also like to point out that there's more eyes checking the content than your regular forum-post
I agree. Manning books in particular are very well done. Some other publishers are not near as good but are just flooding the market with content right now.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: Also still maintain a personal library;
I think that is a good idea too.
I read a lot of ebooks but I still prefer hardcopy for the most part. However, ebooks are nice for night-time reading since my device is backlit and it's all you need (no other light source).
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raddevus wrote: I read a lot of ebooks but I still prefer hardcopy for the most part. However, ebooks are nice for night-time reading since my device is backlit and it's all you need (no other light source).
My eyes start to burn if I do that for a longer time; paper is a lot more friendly, and most important, no ads, no popups, no cookywarnings
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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A lot of bookstores don't even carry tech books because they are so expensive and the turn over is so fast that they get stuck with them.
Got my site back up after my time in the woods!
JaxCoder.com
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Mike Hankey wrote: A lot of bookstores don't even carry tech books
I know. It's got to be tough enough for bookstores having all that stock all the time to be interesting enough for people to come in. Then with tech books it's even worse because the content can completely die on the shelf and no one even wants it. And finally the book stores often don't even know which tech has died either because they are not tech people working in the industry so they have stuff that isn't even wanted.
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I still buy them, as previously mentioned by others, more for end to end reading to validate/expand on what I may already know or for a walkthrough if new/different technologies and offerings. I find them easier to work through and the explanations are usually better, than what's online.
I don't use them to problem solve existing solutions.
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Wastedtalent wrote: I find them easier to work through and the explanations are usually better, than what's online.
I agree. sometimes you want far more than what you can really get online.
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I've even thrown away books about not-changing-anymore-technology (Turbo Pascal 7, anyone?) simply because looking it up online is faster than browsing through the book.
Neither do I use books for philosophical thinking, I do that entirely in my head. Books only distract me from arranging the building blocks in an abstract space.
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Personally I never buy hardcopy "How to X with Y" type books any more, mostly because they are out of date by the time you get them (echoing your sentiments with for example Angular) and also because they tend to cater to the lowest common denominator and don't actually teach you much outside of Y's documentation.
Foundational stuff like "Continuous Delivery", "Release It!", "Patterns of Enterprise Architecture" and all that kind of thing age much better IMO. I still refer back to my copy of the *original* Fowler Refactoring book from time to time
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Member 10346655 wrote: because they are out of date by the time you get them
Agree!
Member 10346655 wrote: also because they tend to cater to the lowest common denominator and don't actually teach you much outside of Y's documentation
This is a very big problem. Many books just cover the intro parts of a technology and really don't take you very far at all.
Member 10346655 wrote: I still refer back to my copy of the *original* Fowler Refactoring book from time to time
Very cool! 
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I buy some tech books, but only in digital format. When learning new technology I'll have the book open on a tablet while I work. This is not as convenient as a hardcopy book, it's easy to read but hard to pick through. OTOH, I've always got a 100+ books in my pocket.
Most of my career was spent as a consultant. When I needed a book, I convinced the client to buy it. When I moved on to a new assignment, the book remained the client's property. Which was fine -- I got the book I needed, I didn't have to pay for it, and when I moved to a new assignment the book was either outdated or I was now working in a different technology. On a few occasions I convinced the new client to get the book I had left behind. This strategy was a win for both sides.
Now days when I need to learn a new technology (which is often) I go to SyncFusion and look at their Succinctly books. They are free -- quick primers to get started in a new technology.
Once I have the basics of a technology, I rarely crack books. Online searches work much better for solving problems, but not for learning.
My employer pays for PluralSight, so I use videos sometimes. That's good for an overview, but for hard learning I need to play with the tinkertoys ...
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Great post and a lot of interesting details of your experience with books.
BryanFazekas wrote: When I needed a book, I convinced the client to buy it
That's interesting and amazing to me...that the client would buy them and that they wouldn't necessarily be concerned that you didn't "already know everything". I'm sure this is due to your relationship with the clients.
Way back around 1999 or so a company I worked for bought us a subscription for the Safari Bookshelf. It mostly contained the O'Reilly books which was really great anyways.
I've been a member since then because every book you can imagine is basically available on there.
I am on an old 10 book thing were a book has to stay on the shelf for 30 days but you can cycle them on regularly. It's only $19.95/month and you can read just about any book you will find. There's something like 16,000 books on there and they're fast at adding them.
BryanFazekas wrote: PluralSight, so I use videos sometimes. That's good for an overview,
I feel that same way there. Videos are sometimes more annoying than books because you can't easily find the section of the stuff that you want to learn. I always play pluralsight videos at 1.7x their normal speed.
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raddevus wrote: reat post and a lot of interesting details of your experience with books.
Glad you liked it!
Some clients were a hard sell on buying books, but when I told them that I had no intention of keeping the books, it helped. This way they had a library of books for the technologies they used.
Safari Bookshelf looks interesting, but I don't read enough books to justify the price. It might be a good idea for an employer, depending on situation.
Funny story -- some years back I worked with a guy who constantly bought books and never discarded any. When he moved offices (he was FTE) his books took 40+ copier paper boxes to move. It took him a couple of days to pack his books, move them, and unpack/arrange. His new office was 30' down the hallway ...
I asked him why he didn't get rid of books on ancient technology (well, ancient in IT terms) that he hadn't touched in over 10 years and never would again. His response? "Do you have any idea what I paid for those books??!!!"
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BryanFazekas wrote: his books took 40+ copier paper boxes to move.
Wow!
I used old books for target practice with a .44 magnum. It's quite instructive. We got to see bullet paths through the thick books -- perfect bore through the front (looked like a drill did it) for a couple of inches then rips the back out with a huge hole after the bullet becomes deformed.
Very cool science. Since I had a lot of tech books stacked in front of each other we were able to "capture" the bullets and see how deformed they become.
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raddevus wrote: I think Angular is a big one that is to blame too. Every time I turn around Angular is a completely new release. Now .NET Core seems to be doing the same thing.
I blame marketing in general. Documentation has gone by the wayside in favor of getting out new, flashy releases to make a splash.
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milo-xml wrote: I blame marketing in general.
I agree. If it isn't new in the last 30 seconds then it is old.
If it is old, it cannot be good. 
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Books need more "intelligence".
More / different ways are needed for presenting "learning" content.
E-books only try to mimic real books and not much else.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: Books need more "intelligence".
That's a very good point. They should allow reading and then interactive content too. That would be an amazing learning experience.
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Here;s my thoughts, as a tech author.
I'm currently working on a hard copy, print published book for Packt, so there are obviously books still being sold in enough volume that the publishers are still confident getting authors on board to write content.
However, MOST of the content I actually get paid to write comes in one of two forms.
1) Very short, quick learning books, typically only released as eBooks, that I get paid a one off for and the company hiring me get to keep all copyrights. These books typically are used for pure marketing purposes, and are often given away free. The daily build news letter from CP, often has a few linked in it. The purpose of these books is simple. For the reader, they are quick to consume, quick to learn from, and in the case of some publishers (That don't cater to developers, but to CEO's, CTO's etc) they are designed to get non techs to a level where they at least sort of understand what the techs are on about.
2) Paid blogging. Pure and simple. Most of the sites I blog for are media outlets, they make thier money from advertising, but people won't come to view the adverts unles there is suitable content for them to visit the site. An awfull lot of these sites, are happy to go for the lowest common denomitator they can, and often pick up citizen developers at half the price folks like me charge, who then write content that's only just enough plausible to look as though it's true fact.
For the "in print" books, I typically don't get paid, well not in the "truest sense", that is I don't get X amount per hour for writing Y, typically the publisher will make a guess at how many thier going to sell, and give me a slice of those royaties up front.
What then happens is I get none of the royalties from the sales until that amount exceeds what I was given upfront.
So, if I get say £5000 (Yes I'm in the UK... deal with it  ), but the book never makes any more than £2000 it sales, then I come out on top.
If I get £5000, and the book makes £10000, the I'll see another £5000.
Note that I picked those figures out the air, it's not typically a fixed portion of successive royalties, it's typically a single fixed pre payment, then a given percentage after that.
So I might make £5000 up front, but on £10k worth of sales the % might be lower and I might make only £2k, things are often stacked in favour of the publishing house for in print books.
So what's my actual point.
Quite simple.
Many tech authors don't do in print titles any more simply beacuse it's not worth thier while, The book I'm on with will only net me some nice income if it sells in excess of about 30,000 copies.
Since it's a .NET core 3 title, I and the publisher do expect it to sell quite a lot, as where hoping to release when DNC3 goes first public release.
In general though, writing in print books really doesn't bring in a huge amount these days, unless (as has beenpointed out) you have what's called a perpetual title, that continues to sell in absence of any particular technology or platform.
The money is to be made in short marketing focused titles and paid blogging, but beacuse of the lack of a royalty scheme with these titles, you generally have to spend more hours writing if you want to use it to provide a full time income.
Hopefully this has given you guys a little bit of an insight into the current state of the market from a writers point of view.
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OK, so I cloned the tiny 1TB disc on this lappy to a 2TB one (which is pretty much the smallest that's not a PITA for me), and got a huge boost in file-op speed because of the bigger cache and general "I'm a sh1tload better than that old cr@p disc you had before" element, and that's cool.
But the big thing is that I accidentally hovered over a username in the Lounge, and the user pop-up thingy popped up!\
I haven't seen them on this lappy, before, so I just assumed it was because I had, yet again, changed my default browser.
And this is a clone, remember, so it should behave exactly the same!
So I'm chuffed pink!
The next time I want to make a snarky remark write an intelligent comment about a the superbowl not being played in Australia, for example, I'll have more information on hand, to help perfect the snark confirm the appropriateness of what I write!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
modified 25-Jan-19 17:03pm.
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