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What Kind of Books do You Want?
ctrimble asks: "I'm the acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company (not the one with the animals, but we have had six of our books reviewed favourably, here on Slashdot) and part of my job is to determine what books my company should publish. This consists, mainly, of me sitting in my apartment eating peanut butter sandwiches, reading Slashdot,
and writing perl scripts that generate titles in a Madlibs type fashion: "Hacking Ruby for Midgets" (forthcoming in July). Unfortunately, there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between my methodology and filling the needs of the programming community. Market research is tough to do in tech books since you need to forcast about a year in advance. So, let me pose the question to you -- what kind of books do you want? What spots do you see as needing to be filled? For that matter, do you even want dead-tree books, or are eBooks and/or online documentation sufficient?"
Anything that's well written is better than anything that's not, no matter what languages they cover and what ones you're using. As long as you have a decent function reference for your language, the rest is all programming theory anyway.
Nope, no sig
For you comment on us wanting dead tree books, I vote yes. I like being able to make notes in the margins, highlight, etc., and taking a book places is usually easier than a laptop or pc.
On a side note, ancedotes are good. Most topics are usually pretty dry, so adding in a little humor can make the books more fun.
thanks
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I would like something like a text book: 50 java problems. Each chapter a short problem that requires some java hacking to do, and then at the end each problem coded out. So you could hack through it and then read good reference code about a problem with which your are familiar.
I use java as an example, but I really would like it in all languages.
I'm getting tired of having to choose between a $75 book with 1200 pages and a $70 book with 1150 pages. Whatever happened to concise text? Doesn't anyone at the publisher actually try to carry these monsters around any more? Let's get back to basics and not have any more of these 2 kilogram wonders with 18 faces on the cover....
And I know it's not easy. First off, Dead Tree is good. sometimes just a break for the eyes, sometimes just the security of knowing it won't go down.
What I want is the Linux Application Guide. Basically, a book that says "Here are the major Word Processors. These are the key features of each. We suggest you decide based on whether you need to do this, that or the other." Ditto browsers, Desktops, mail clients, DVD players, Instant Messaging, p2p.
Basically, I use Linux. I use KDE because I tried it and I like it. pine because I tried it and liked it. Ditto Konq, Kword, mplayer, and others. They may or may not be the best there is. They're just the first I tried that was good enough. So... help me pick my applications.
I know you don't write the books... but I've been waiting for that book, and haven't heard anything about it. I know there are problems -- time frame, distro, etc. Just try to make it distro-independent, maybe list easy distros for each app. Also, it would need a brief bit about configuration. I'm thinking two to three pages per app plus a couple screen shots. Order of five to ten apps in less than a dozen categories.
Short, specific, inexpensive, and if it claims to teach me anything in 24 hours, 1 week, 1 month, or even in 10 easy steps I'm not going to buy it.
If it claims to be a "Bible". I'm not going to buy it.
If it has source code it had better come with a CD or a link to a well-designed and fast web site.
If it doesn't have source code, I'd rather save $5 and not get a CD instead of getting a CD with demo software that is already 6 monthes out-of-date by the time the book is published.
Also, any book that begins with a "history of the computer" introduction goes back on the shelf down at Borders.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I am an avid consumer of tech books. I buy about 1 a month or more, at $50+ a pop.
Whatever subject I am currently interested in gets my money. Lately it's been OpenGL and game programming (especially math). In the last 3 months I've purchased or recieved for X-mas (by request):
OpenGL Game Programming
Programming Linux Games
3D Math For Game Programmers
Physics For Game Programmers
Tk/TCL For Real Programmers
3D Game Engine Design
DNS and BIND
SSH (the O'Reilly one)
Game Programming Gems 2
and a few more.
So, what am I looking for?
It depends what I am interested in today. Right now I need a really good C++ STL reference book.
I also need a math primer. I haven't thought about math since my aborted attempt at college 12 years ago. While I did get an A in Calculus, that was 12 years ago and I remember nothing. The 3D Math book I mentioned above pretty much assumes you already know Calc.
It seems to me that there are alot of beginning programming books, especially about game design and C++, but few advanced books.
Also, there are few game AI books out there, but I see on Amazon that there are 2 promising titles to be released in the next few months.
One of my favorite programming books of all time is The Perl Cookbook. Now, I make my living programming Perl on Linux, and this book gets cracked open by me at least once a week. I've even seem comments in other people's code that said "If you don't understand this next bit, see the Cookbook page xxx". A Cookbook type thing for C++ would really be cool.
Alright. Lunchtime. Off to Fry's.
-geekd
I think that paper books are the way to go. Screen real-estate is always at a premium, especially when programming. And no one would want to clutter that with yet-another-window.
With that said, it's also useful to make the content available online if possible, as an abridged reference if nothing else. It's really handy for when you don't have the book handy and just want to look up "hey, how did they do that trick again?"
As for subjects I'd like to see? I prefer books that don't neccesarily focus on a single library (everything you ever needed to know about gtk!). While useful as reference manuals, the same thing is generally online. Focus instead on using some combination of libraries to come up with a useful working environment for whatever it is you're aiming for, be that quick apps, huge apps, games, or what have you.
Random and weird software I've written.
Personally, I would really like to see a J2EE book that isn't written like a doctoral thesis nor like a primer for manager's who don't code. The ideal J2EE book would have install guides for setting up Tomcat, Jboss and Postgresql. These are tools anyone can freely obtain and use. The books I've seen thus far have left me dizzy, not entirely sure how to apply the knowledge, and I've been programming in Java for over 7 years. Go figure?
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Maybe it's just me, but my biggest complaint is most computer books out there are concentrating on how to use the newest coolest language instead of the underlying principles. I'd rather have pseudo-code cover how to pattern a peer-to-peer network, an mp3 codec, a nearest word match spell checker, a regular expression engine, or a typical Civ-like AI. These days I hunger for books to explain how the hell Divx works without trudging me with specifics like how to fashion an if statement in Java or an STL in C++. I want material with reasonable amounts of math and code snippets, not a rehashed programming lesson.
One of these days I'll write that encyclopedia.
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
I'm up to my ears with books detailing how to write in a specific language. Structure and syntax is easy.. you learn how to use an if statement in one language, you know how they work in all languages. API's are about the same, references documenting joe random library are a dime a dozen.
My problem whenever I involve myself with coding something is getting knowledge about all the other vital pieces to programming, various algorithms, methods of structuring a program, stuff like that.
See, for those kids who managed to push themselves through college all think this is easy stuff.. linked lists, random numbers, event based programming, hashing, and so on (have a firm grasp of these concepts, just using them as examples). That's what they paid to go to school for. But for the rest of us who're trying to cut a living and can't easily do the school thing anymore, a "teach yourself" book or books educating the more abstract parts of programming would be a major help.
Some of this is documented, slightly, on the web or in existing open sourced projects. But most of it reads like class notes at best, and I have yet to find good books that go over these sorts of things. The information is there, but it's not presented in a manner that's easy to absorb.
As an example, oreilly did a book a while back called 'Practical Programming in C'. That was a step in the right direction. It was an easy read, but taught a lot of really useful C concepts that most people take for granted. As far as it went, it was immensely valuable to me both as a reference and a tutor.
Basically, there's a niche between API references and language syntax books that seems horribly unfilled. I'd buy books immediatley if they seemed to fall in that category.
O'Reilly books are so loved. They're concise. Although the Python Libraries book is a monster. May be their thickest ever.
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Dead Tree books. Possibly in smaller volumes, at reasonable prices. I'm getting annoyed at having to shell out $50 for a book every week, for a huge linux bible sized book. I want smaller books in tighter topics. One of the reasons I've always liked the animal covers; they're small, to the topic, and inexpensive.
I'd also like to see more in the way of method books, rather than subject books. ie, something that teaches how to program rather than how to program in a specific language. possibly case books, that show how to get around certain problems. I'd like to see books less revolved around programs, and more to the topic of methods and strategies. It might not require a person to buy a new $50 book every week for every different program, but it will make a better book.
Meh
Ebooks suck, I do not like them, especially when I'm working on a downed server and have 4 Terminal.app's open, and I have to find a spot for Acrobat to fit.
I'd like to see:
- More books with the flexible bindings (ala Oreilly). Books that don't lay flat suck.
- More "Cookbook" style books, as long as they are truly thorough and diverse (see Perl Cookbook for a good example).
Essentially, system engineers like to see short code snippets of how to accomplish odd tasks in a quick, easy manner. Again, when stuff's broken, or data needs to be pulled pronto, I'm not going to wade through man pages, etc.
- I don't favor the Nutshell style books, they're usually poorly organized and don't comprise enough of the "right" information.
- More quality assurance. Too many books these days are rushed out to market way too quickly. I'd rather buy a book that's good quality, rather than "quickest out". Most of us customers read Amazon.com reviews to get an idea of what books to buy on a particular subject. Keep that in mind.
- Topics I'd like to see? more advanced-level BSD stuff, more kernel hacking stuff, LDAP, you can never have too many Perl books. Think about stuff your target audience would love to see. Oreilly is great for doing this, see: "CGI Programming with Perl", "Perl for System Administration", etc
I would like to go a little further in clarifying this request. KDE3, QT3, and the most relevant versions of gnome from a C/C++ perspective.
I like to see books with a lot of meat and less fluff. There needs to be more books with good examples, and not just books where the examples are taken from the online text. I want the code examples to demostrate the concept(s) being learned. I am sick of reading a book only to learn the program examples to demonstrate the concept(s) were taken from online text provided with the code and/or libraries. These examples tend to be out of date and/or very simple examples that a monkey could figure out.
Another topic would be ODBC 3.x on Unix platforms. I have a general book on ODBC, but it isn't a good resource for programming ODBC on Unix platforms.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Me too.
This is an excellent suggetion and I hope Cliff pays attention to this one and can have some influence here. Regular soft bound books that I actually use fall apart after awhile. Sure, a few pages might get ripped out of a very roughly used spiral book, especially if the covers are not heavy enough (please have covers of sufficiet weight not to be ripped off when being yanked out of backpack) but that is nothing like having the binding of the book disintegrate. Also, being able to have book lie flat is a big plus.
GCC Internals: How it works/How to modify it. - Have you ever looked at this heaping mess of code? I would love to play around with it, but the learning curve is too high to just jump in.
Linux/Unix Lowlevel Programming: Ok there are bunchs of crappy assembly programming books out there... by chapter 12 they have covered what a register is. I don't want the most basic stuff I wanna know exactly how the linker works, I wanna know how stack frames are setup. How ELF binaries are loaded. What assembly code is needed to bind it all together. Sure I can piece most of it together from web sites, the kernel and other sites, but it is hard to put it all together.
Programming KDE 3: QT and KDE are awsome, I do a little bit of development with QT/KDE now, but there is just some documentation that cannot be found...
Architectures of Popular Linux Apps: A book that does an overview of the architectures behind popular linux applications, with a little bit of discussion about thier architecture and implementation, maybe mixed with a little theroy. For instance an chapter on apache, X11, SSH, postfix, php, konqueror, mozilla... This would be really good at helping linux developers dive into existing projects. You could even solicit open-source authors to provide an overview of thier project architecture and ask them to discuss how what thier biggest challenges where, why the did so and so.. This could really boost participation in certain projects.
Using GNU Development Tools: A book that details how to use GDB, gprof, gcov, ld, ar, and etc. effectively with all the options and do-dads. Maybe cover other tools like DDD, Electric Fence, etc.
Oh yeah! These need to be in paper form! Screw electronic form, it sucks to read.
celer
Until my company switched to Linux/Apache for our web and application server needs, I was forced to run Win2k/IIS.
While it runs just fine and dandy, quite a bit of the documentation is geared toward users running Linux/Apache/MySQL
It was a very pleasant experience to see, down below the 'approved' text, a series of users who had already solved problems of how to get PHP to talk to MS SQL over ODBC, which dll's you needed, how to edit your php.ini so that it works *just* right, etc...
Shared user annotation is a very wonderful thing for technical manuals of any kind. All online resources should at least consider doing things like PHP.Net has done.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Hear! Hear! Paper is:
Electronic formats are okay when you need to provide documentation to a whole bunch of people but most people I know still like having a paper copy and cite the reasons above as why.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
How about some more FreeBSD books. I still can't quite believe we have so few.
:)
Also, MORE LDAP BOOKS PLEASE.
More CISSP options would be great too.
The 1500 page reference tome is fine. I don't carry those around, they sit on my shelf and look pretty. However, I only buy those that include an e-book version so I can use it on laptop (copied to hard drive, not carry around the cdrom); it's much easier to do a search for something in the e-book than to dig through the tome.
As for "learning" books, if it has to be 1200 pages, I'd rather it was broken up into smaller books in a boxed set. That way I only have to carry around a 1lb book instead of a 8lb one.
You don't need to include pictures of everything- we're smart enough that if we're not at a computer and we can't picture it in our heads, we'll come back to it when we are near a computer.
And those "HINTS", "SECRETS", "WARNINGS"- yeah, yeah, they're important, but we're not idiots- you don't need to waste so much space with fancy borders and colors and icons so it attracts our attention.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I'd like to see a book about using OCaml, or Lisp, or Scheme, or some other functional language with a free implementation, to address real-world programming problems. (OCaml would be nice; it's widely recognized as a great language, but there's no English-language text.)
While the audience may be limited, I think there's a screaming need for such a book within that audience; almost all existing FP texts are way off in theory-land, and most predate the huge boom of the web, which is a natural environment for functional languages.
An added benefit for a publisher is that this particular technology landscape changes slowly, so the book will have a long shelf life, and is at no risk of being obsolete before it's released.
What I'd like is a series of books about computer languages that do not try to teach me programming and do not assume I am a moron. Oh yes, and are not bulky references to every single function call possible.
When I pick a new language (especially if it's just YAPL -- Yet Another Procedural Language -- of the C/C++/Perl/Java/etc. variety) I don't want to wade through pages and pages explaing basics of syntax -- I can pick it up quicky on my own. I also don't want to have if..then..else construct explained to me for the nth time, unless there is something fancy about it.
What I want is a conscise explanation of the mode of thinking that the language was designed to go with. I want to know which idioms people who write in that language use, and why *this* way of doing things is cooler/neater/a win. I want to get a feel for the language.
For example, in Perl the camel book, besides reference stuff, provides a lot of advice and examples of Ways Things Are Usually Done In Perl, along with explanations or at least hints why this is generally accepted to be The Right Thing. The camel book (and writings by Larry Wall in general) provide a wonderful feel for the flavor of Perl and why it's not just interpreted C with a loose syntax (we'll leave the fine distinction between Perl and line noise for another time).
I've been looking for a similar book about Java with utter lack of success. Either it's introduction to programming for novices, or a libraries' reference guide. The closest I've found was a book by Bruce Eckel -- Thinking in Java, I think it was called -- but even that wasn't all that good.
Lisp people understand perfectly that thinking while coding in Lisp is radically different from thinking while coding in C/C++/etc. I want these differences in thinking, in flavor, in idiom, to be shown to me for many different languages, starting from Java and Python and Eiffel, and ending with Haskell and Oberon and Intercal.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I swear, the technical publishing community must assume that programmers were born with C++ knowledge, because every book in creation assumes that one has that.
Two decades ago, computer user and programmer were pretty much synonmous. But today, things are different. Believe it or not, there are a lot newbies that are just now getting interested in software development after being computer users for quite a while. Looking for a book on Java programming that assumes no programming experience? You can probably find it, but it's not exactly easy.
Want a book to learn Mac OS X Cocoa programming? You better hope you have C++ or Java experience, otherwise you're simply out of luck. There are no entry-level Cocoa books. Same for WebObjects. Developers themselves aren't at all concerned about this, of course. They expect everyone to follow the same path they did.
Believe it or not, a lot of people do not want to read a *full* book before even cracking the book actually pertains to Mac OS X development. Additionally, not everyone is interested in become career software developers. They may just want to try it out as a hobby first. I hear from all sorts of people that just got Mac OS X and want to learn how to use those free development tools that Apple provides. There's no well-suited path for that. Why should you have to learn all sorts of general C theory when all you want to do is learn the stuff that pertains to Mac OS X development? This turns potential developers off, which is sad.
The Visual QuickStart series by Peachpit Press is the only series that I have seen that is consistently good at addressing this problem. As far as I can tell, the series is rapidly expanding.
Here's a crazy idea: how about a book that teaches you Java or C with the intention of writing Mac OS X apps? How about a Java servlet book that doesn't assume you're transitioning from C++? How about making this books readible and more practical than theory-oriented?
Lower the barrier to entry.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
No, that should get you a rather large set back. Heck, grab a phone directory for many sororities and that would work. The hardpart is adding a third vairable that most geeks want intelligence != null.