25 Years of O'Reilly Books

wka writes "The year 2003 marks the 25th anniversary of publisher O'Reilly and Associates. O'Reilly has a site to mark the event. Readers can learn about the origin of the first animal covers in the time line, and read an anniversary message from Tim O'Reilly, stating his 'audacious' goal '[t]o change the world by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of innovators.'"

Comments

The sun has set on O'Reilly

[ObviousGuy]

For a while O'Reilly was the premier book publisher for computer related topics. However if there latest offerings (going back at least 2 years) have been any indication, they have had mucho trouble attracting top writing talent.

Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.

Also, it is important to note how fragile O'Reilly books are. The construction techniques leave much to be desired as pages frequently just fall out of the binding. This is a small minus, however, compared to the lack of quality content on those pages.

This is not to say that there aren't any good O'Reilly books, though. Most of their stuff published before 1999 was pretty good and their Perl coverage is second to none. However most other topics are pretty shabbily approached and the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Re:The sun has set on O'Reilly

[miu]

Sad, but true that O'Reilly quality seems to be on the way down. I loved the O'Reilly books when I did a couple years as a sysadmin. DNS & Bind, Programming Perl, Sendmail, the 4.4 BSD reference series, etc. All earned classic status - I had work copies, home copies, and always recomended them to anyone who asked.

The newest stuff: ssh, RADIUS, 802.11, openssl, etc. have all been somewhat disapointing. Maybe this is because my professional needs have changed, but it really seems like the books are just not written at the same level.

Maybe competing against Learn crap in a 10 seconds with no reading required!!! is taking its toll.

Re:The sun has set on O'Reilly

[packeteer]

The books tend to be prohibitably expensive to some. As a high school student who doesn't have enough money to lay down $50 a book it can be a hassel but thats what the library is for. I have talked to people who use books such as these to make money and they all say that the price is not an issue in a good book becuase they will help you gain far more. Personally i plan on making some money off what i have learned and then going and buying at least 10 of their books. One of the easiest ways to fix a problem on a computer is to find the book/chapter that covers your problem and read the whole thing. The "extra" knowledge that you get from these books makes it far more useful than another book where you simply learn which buttons to click in a GUI.

Even though i prefer O'Reilly books i still read others. After i read the O'Reilly book i like to go to the library and grab a couple of competing books. Even if the quality isn't any better knowledge absorbs better when you read the same thing said in two different ways for me.

Re:The sun has set on O'Reilly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my belief that O'Reilly books have suffered in quality because the authors submitting books are doing a crappier job.

Authors are seeing the "Learn MFC and Linux together in 15 seconds" books which are basically reprints of FAQ's, and existing manuals to jack up the size of the book to 800 pages and saying "I could do that, man"... and they DO.

Garbage in, Garbage out. If the authors all write crap books, O'Reilly will put out crap books.

I will add that I have a lot of GOOD O'Reilly books (Sendmail, Perl stuff, Java stuff, even the Curses book, and a set of X11 from when X11R4 was new). I don't want a book on "How to turn on your new Mac".

Awesome Job

[wideBlueSkies]

The only thing I can really contribute to this discussion is this:

O'Reilly has some of the best books available on the topics covered. They have helped me enhance my skills more than any other source of information. When I need to learn something tech related, I always check ORA first to see if there's a book available.

My bookshelves at work and home are predominantly blue, pink, and green. :)

I can't thank them here properly, words don't really do the job. So I plan on continuing to buy their books. That's my thank you.

Dover Math Books

[WindowsTroll]

I've always liked the O'Reilly books - good content at a decent price and very distinctive covers. Reminds me of all those math books from Dover Publications (http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-mat hematics.html) - excellent math books at rock bottom prices and very distinctive covers.

Re:Nuthin' but O'Reilly

[microbob]

Personal preference I guess.

I always read through the books on the shelf in the category that I'm looking for...I stand there for hours until my feet hurt :)

It was hard to not get a few of the Sun Java books.

The Rox Press books are good too.

But, there is just something about the O'Reilly books that my brain can digest.

Yes, the bindings are bit fragile, but. . .

[kfg]

it is at least for a reason. They *open flat.*

Not only are the "eight hundred pound gorilla" books generally inferior to the O'Reilly offerings, but you have to break their "studier" bindings to make them actually usable at the keyboard.

I bless O'Reilly every day for this little, and for them more expensive to produce, nicety, even if the odd page does fall out of some of the older and more well thumbed volumes.

KFG