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No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

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Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#141

Post by falcor84 »

michaelt wrote: post #112
falcor84 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just write a short lesson to explain the difference between capex and opex? Well... thank you, I guess. But again, the question is: is it ever rational for a functional unit manager to be given a particular maximum opex budget and not be allowed to capitalize a part of that? What benefit would such a restriction offer to the business?

> What benefit would such a restriction offer to the business? You approve opex budget for the widget department because you know they can turn 10 cents of plastic into $1 of widgets, and you want them doing that in the forthcoming quarter. You're happy for them to spend a nigh-unlimited amount on inputs like plastic, so long as it's on things with a 90% margin. But you don't want the department head spending their n…

Thanks, I see how this would make sense in general. But it does go against this particular case, no? L&D should probably be budgeted outside the widget COGS anyway, but assuming that the widget department has a single budget, and they're going to be using it for O'Reilly books anyway, is it still somehow rational to pay more for a subscription than less for owning the books? Is it just that that consider the extra accounting effort to be more expensive than dealing with the relatively small inefficiencies?

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#142

Post by j45 »

dboreham wrote: post #80
j45 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books still activate a different part of the brain than reading on a screen, including e-ink, so it's not you or a dying breed, people may turn out to not learn as deeply or as quickly.

Probably true but I'm not going to lug 10 textbooks onto a plane.

For sure, that would be a backpack that is too big as a carry on.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#143

Post by TSiege »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #69
AlotOfReading wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely isn't the latter. Numerical Recipes and Hacker's Delight have tons of gems that you won't get from an LLM, or that an LLM will even understand despite appearing all their training sets.

Even before LLMs became big I started hording solid technical books, as there was so much mis information on Google/SO that any non-trivial technical question could not be answer without a high probability that the answer was fundamentally wrong. LLMs are super helpful for learning, but without the foundation of a true textbook at your side they will very easily go off the rails into a world of imagination.

Any recommendations for a few keepers a programmer should have?

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#144

Post by tailspin2019 »

tombert wrote: post #3

I get the O’Reilly subscription through the ACM. It’s an extra $75 a year after a regular ACM membership. A lot less than $500/year.

I don’t think you get the same level of access though? I tried an O’Reilly subscription directly then went the ACM route and remember being disappointed that it was a more limited subscription.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#145

Post by naikrovek »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #66
whenc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went un-noticed here, I think, but The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently fired most of its staff and are taking on no new books. In the email they sent to authors, they quoted a 40% YoY fall in non-fiction sales, industry-wide.

As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space. I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine. I could spend hours just exploring what languages and topics there were I didn't even know existed. Powell's Technical Books used to be an entire separate…

> As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space.

When I think about this, I get a little bit scared. Imagine books going away, even if it's just the subcategory of technical books.

The printed word has been around for a long time. The number of things that have been printed has always gone up. It really bothers me that that's changing.

PDFs and websites are no substitute for printed paper bound in a cover. PDFs and websites are a fallback when the preferred media isn't available, they are not supposed to be the preferred media. All of the of the reasons that people have given over the years are applicable when it comes to why paper is superior for this.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#146

Post by usr1106 »

AlexB138 wrote: post #60
theli0nheart wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you paying?

$199/year. I think it is worth that, but I don't think I'd pay much more.

My account is from 2007ish and even cheaper. I just hope there won't ever be a problem with my yearly payment because obviously they won't reopen it on old terms.

Well, it's good business for them and for me. I can access books when it comes to my mind (not that often). They get the money. I would certainly never subscribe again at current rates.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#148

Post by [deleted] »

zippyman55 wrote: post #126
seg_lol wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UW bookstore in Seattle like many big science schools had a wondrous technical book section. Isles of Springer. The bookstore itself is a shadow of its former shelf.

Yes, I was so disappointed with my visit last year - not yet hopeless, but close to it. Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle is a better place.

[deleted]

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#149

Post by cestith »

tjr wrote: post #26
whenc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went un-noticed here, I think, but The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently fired most of its staff and are taking on no new books. In the email they sent to authors, they quoted a 40% YoY fall in non-fiction sales, industry-wide.

Is this because people seek knowledge from LLMs rather than from books now? Or is it because LLMs know everything that is in books, so people don't feel compelled to learn any more themselves?

I think it’s largely because of eBooks, and the proliferation of lower-effort eBooks on the market. The latter is increasing because people use LLMs to write them. To actually make money on tech books, you kind of have to be a juggernaut or have some runaway hit titles. Once isn’t enough, either, because someone’s always putting out something newer on the same topic or people are moving to a different stack altogether.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#150

Post by anyonecancode »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #66
whenc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went un-noticed here, I think, but The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently fired most of its staff and are taking on no new books. In the email they sent to authors, they quoted a 40% YoY fall in non-fiction sales, industry-wide.

As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space. I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine. I could spend hours just exploring what languages and topics there were I didn't even know existed. Powell's Technical Books used to be an entire separate…

> I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine.

B&N, and Borders, are how I learned to code. Directionless after college, I thought, hey, why not learn how to make websites? And I'd spend a lot of time after work reading books at these stores (and yes, buying too).

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