Re: What's up with C++ (books)?

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Dave Thomas <dave-kbbdpT5sCmpWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> there are fewer books on any topic being published. I look at the computer
>> section at my local Barnes & Noble and it is about half the size it was five
>> years ago.
>>
>
> I don't think that's true. It's just that brick and mortar stores are
> carrying fewer titles.
>
> The market is shifting, and traditional channel sales are dropping. So the
> successful publishers and authors are the ones that  don't rely on those
> channels.
>
> Why don't we have C++ books under development? Because no one asks for
> them, and we're here to serve the readers.
>
>
> Dave
>
>
[ Not a publisher or an author or anything, just my $.02 ]

I think trends in new books are all about transitions.  Why are so many
books being published around Ruby, Rails, .Net and mobile dev? Because there
are swarms of developers who are broadening their horizons to encompass
these new technologies who are looking to get a leg up and turning to books
to make that happen.

A question to ask yourself (and I mean you in the general sense, not you
Dave :) is - of all the people currently working in C++, how many of them
have already been doing that for years?  How many new developers are
entering the C++ fold?

As to the emerging new standards like C0X and the like, I think the C/C++
community is incredibly careful around (and maybe a tad resistant to?)
change, and so adoption might not be as wide as it could be.

Also, from what I understand (I haven't worked actively in C++ for years)
there are very few implementations that support those standards completely
yet, if any.  This StackOverflow question is a couple of years old but
speaks to that:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/980573/compiler-support-for-upcoming-c0x

-Chris



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Christopher Patti - Geek At Large | GTalk: [email protected] | AIM:
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