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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?"
A book on how to configure management would be useful. By "configure management", I mean:
-describe typical management structures
-explore how decisions are made
-attempt to aggregate and parametrize hierarchical processes, such that one can start referring to them by their "Pattern"-name shorthand.
-discuss what the managed can and cannot do to influence these decision-making structures.
Remain calm! All is well!
What *I* want are "pocket" ie small books with clear-cut examples of useable code. I switch between Perl, C, C++, Java, etc all the time, and it get frustrating when you forget a certain syntax or way of doing something. Either ONE book with lots of basic syntax examples, or many small books for each language!
I know LOTS of CS students who would buy them.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
please, dear god, offer RING BOUND versions of your books! I really don't understand why this isn't a common thing, especially among technical references. Standard bindings do not hold up to the abuse that my books take, and are especially annoying if I am trying to work on a piece of code while keeping a reference book open at the same time. Ring bindings allow for books to lie flat on a desk, instead of flopping closed. To get the same effect from a normally bound book, you practically have to break the binding.
Just a thought. I'd probably own more books if they were just easier to use while doing actual work.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
- No color pages unless they are absolutely, unquestionably necessary
- No CD-ROMs full of code when a Web site would do the job better
If I must spend oodles of money on a computer-programming book, I'd prefer it be the smallest quantity of oodles possible.
- No power source needed.
- Less fragile.
- Less chance of data loss through accident or negligence.
- Losing one physical book denies access to that book; losing your eBook reader denies access to all eBooks.
- They smell nice.
- They look pretty lining bookshelves.
Disadvantages?I would love to see a book on practical Content Management. Maybe covering the ZOPE CMF, but also looking at the issues invloved, workflow, edititing models, etc etc.
Maybe looking at some of the more established systems (Story server, Spectra), but also looking at Jakarta, Tomcat, Velocity, Jetspeed and Turbine.
I'd like to see one like:
Windows Administrator's guide to Red Hat Linux
Something that'd use the knowledge that many Windows NT/2000/XP domain administrators already have, but relate it to the Linux way of doing things. Have the book set up so that you look to the area you'd find the equivalent setting in Windows, and it'd tell you what the Red Hat equivalent was.
I'm not trying to say Red Hat is the only distribution, and I actually prefer debian myself, but it's the most widely known, and would be a good place to start for a book like this.
Such a book would be nice, because it could be written above the "Linux for dummies" level, since it would assume the reader has some technical skills, but would ease the transition to a new system.
I do Windows support for a living, and there are a lot of things that I can do quite quickly in Windows, but I wind up kind of lost trying to find them in Linux, even simple things like changing the resolution/refresh rate/color depth of my display.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I would like to see an entire book based on "Cool Things with X"
Most of what I've seen written about X is a short overview in a "Learning Linux" book or 7 volume programming manuals. There doesn't seem to be anything in between. The book should explain, in detail, the X config files, the startup files, stuff to do with the client and server. Maybe touch on window managers.
Answer questions such as "Can I just run one X server on my network instead of on every host to save disk space?" or "Can I display a window running on one host on another host?".
_.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._
ASCII art?? I thought it was a REGULAR expression
I think it's safe to say that we don't want (or need) any more "How to Be An Unleashed Dummy In 21 Days" books.
Rather than Yet Another Computer Book that simply cats the "--help" into a book, I'd like to see a revolution in the computer book template. Oh, sure, a book that explains what each and every function in PHP does is helpful, but I can get that online.
How about a case study book? A series of case study books?
I'd like to see a section in every book titled, "These things will likely shaft you".
Fictionalize a manual. The Adventures of Nerd Man. (okay, this one is reachy)
Best yet, I'd like to read a book that doesn't have this damn phrase in it: "... but that is beyond the scope of this book..." Usually, that's the part that I'm stuck on.
You can probably get a thousand concepts from just reading HOWTOs and grepping for that phrase. Those are the parts where the medium-level people (most of the population) are stuck.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
How about a book going the other way? I usually try to stay far, far away from Windows admin tasks, but the generally low quality of Windows admins means that I'm often left on my own since the problems I'm solving rarely fit into the point-and-click world they live in.
/etc/init.d, but what's the details?
There are books that attempt to explain simple Linux tasks to Windows users, but don't seem to be any books that discuss advanced Windows topics to Linux/Unix users. E.g., I know that the "system tray" is similar to our
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Let me explain what I mean. I'd love to see a book on 3D game programming they way it ought to be done--by talented, dedicated, game developers at actual game development companies, not hacks who've been doing it for a while in the basement who believe they have enough skills to write a book on it.
Tradeoffs, design choices, speed enhancements, math optimizations, etc., that sort of thing. A book where the writer sits in with a game development team on a project and shows the code along with the thought process behind the code itself. Giving formulas for physics equations is great, but showing how developers in the real world use them and how they use them to animate their objects would be even better.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I'd very much like to see...
Unix Hackers Guide to Mac OS X
Written for the experienced Unix user who is unfamiliar with the mac life. Various topics might include things like:
- How the Aqua configuration dialogs interface with basic system configuration files.
- Where configuration information is stored.
- Where to find mounted volumes in the filesystem.
- Command line alternatives to GUI-level actions (specifically configuration type things, not just file manipulation)
- use of the 'defaults' command
- enabling the root account
- "Where is gcc/cc?!"
- How network interfaces are managed (including how this interracts with the 'Locations' dialog and autoconfigure functions. What process mantains this? (i'm still looking for an answer to this one))
- Modifying bootup scripts in a 'safe' way that will survive an OS update.
There are countless other possible topics. Basically everything the experienced unix hacker needs to know in order to quickly become comfortable with Mac OS X.
-acet
I think that the Histroy of computing is one of the coolest subjects out there. I wish that more books would be written on the history of computing, and the history of different fields of computing because it really is so facinating. The more technical the better, because it is interesting the techniques that are laughable and the techniques that we still use.
Books on genuises are cool. I did an essay once, and it was facinating. The public thinks that genuises are born with some 'gift' (thanks Good Will Hunting, thanks A Beautiful Mind). The truth is that most genuises have a very interesting history of focus, drive, and luck. I would love to spend a few hours reading about Bill Joy, what an ass kicker.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Think Like a Programmer: Wrapping your mind around code and other computer conundrums
This book teaches a non-programmer with no experience what sorts of questions to think in terms of when trying to write software. It shows how to think of things in a modular, abstracted way. It also shows how to make simple data structures. I am imagine it as a companion to a nutshell book for a intro CS course or a person trying to learn on their own.
Concise Sexy C
A book that impresses tons of C idioms that make code smaller, simpler to read, self-documenting, and usually faster. From ugly to elegant. Gives good questions to ask yourself to pare down code to a more simple, elegant form.
Developing Beauty-Sense
How to gain the experiences necessary in a craft to tell what's "beautiful" in that sphere of creation. How to watch a pratictioner of the field to tell what is beautiful in your design and what is an ugly hack. That is the stage where you know that you really have a skill down to the point where you are respectable, or at least on the road to being so. This book could be on a paticular skill, or general. Either way I would kill for it.
Coding Standards: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Have you ever spent days going through "updating code documention" after a project because there was too much to change while you went along? Have you ever just plain ignored the standard becuase it didn't tell anyone anything important? Have you ever seen standards where there were often 3 times as many MANDATED boilerplate lines of comments above functions as there were lines of code in the function? Have you ever seen standards for Java and C++ written by C programmers with no understanding of OO principles? This book is for you. It goes over what adds to programmer productivity and what takes away. It shows how to write tools to make documentation of functions and classes painless. It shows how to use existing tools like "indent" to also help documentation efforts. There are special sections near the end that have full bodied examples of good, bad and ugly coding standards from the real world. In these sections there is commentary about why these standards are bad or good, and what goals they are trying to accomplish. Bomus material on explaining the implications of a coding standard to your boss.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Debian's got a lot of (nifty) quirks, few of which are well-documented. Many tasks are automated by Debian-specific tools; but good luck discovering those tools on your own. Many configuration files have been modularized or otherwise tweaked as compared to their Red Hat counterparts. It would be nice to have a system admin book that focused on the Debian Way of doing things.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
I'm talking about a book that takes you through the fundamentals of running a huge software project. Reasonable examples on how to use autoconf and automake. Descriptions of how to set up a CVS repository. How to get the most of out the gcc compiler. How to handle templates. There are plenty of books on how to program, and plenty on high level software management, but very few on using modern gnu tools to get the job done. That is what I want to see.
The middle mind speaks!
Specifically I'd be interesting in the Bonobo aspects of GNOME. Perhaps a book looking at Bonobo in comparison with COM and the Star Office object model.
What I would have called the company up to say if it hadn't been based in Taiwan: Hello? I DON'T HAVE A DAMN COMPUTER! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO READ THIS MANUAL?!?
It's just a good thing that I had no trouble whatsoever installing the board. (It was a Shuttle 555A, still going after 5 or 6 years. It's now my wife's, who uses it for nothing but word processing and websurfing.)
And the brethren went away edified.