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Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

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Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#3

Post by fogus »

peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

    Bigger books sell better.
Is this true? I was always under the impression that bigness was used to justify a higher price point.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#5

Post by Calamitous »

fogus wrote: post #3
peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

Bigger books sell better. Is this true? I was always under the impression that bigness was used to justify a higher price point.

I suspect it's a perception issue... the price difference between a slim programming book and a fat one is minimal. Dropping $50-$60 on a tome feels like a better value if you have to wheel it out with a dolly, instead of slipping it in your pocket.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#6

Post by phren0logy »

peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

I cannot speak to the accuracy of sales vs size, but I wholeheartedly support smaller, better books. I have seen this same trend in textbooks, and it's maddening. Nobody can work through an 800-page textbook on one semester, and it's easy to get the feeling that most of these are exhaustive for their own sake.

Smaller, better books please. I have been, and will continue to, vote with my wallet.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#7

Post by revscat »

I have the Java book -- tome -- he talks about, and completely agree. I purchased it years ago when I was first learning the language, and after attempting to slough through it I wound up giving up.

It has been my experience that the books I get the most out of are the more concise ones. There appears to be a negative correlation between the size of a programming book and its actual usefulness.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#9

Post by CWuestefeld »

peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

Agreed. Obviously K&R is a benchmark. But I'm also thinking of "Effective C++". This was a fairly thin book, but after reading it, I realized that I didn't know half as much about C++ as I thought I did, and in its relatively small number of pages, it taught me a hugely disproportionate amount of how C++ really works.
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