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

Only true in part. Many books are written based on hyped “new and improved” things. This was true for Java several years ago (and now also has died down a bit) and now seems to be the same for Android and iPad stuff.

A new minor release of some small tool gets released, a few days later (and sometimes before) there’s 4-5 books about it, trying to cash in on the hype.

 

C++ and to a degree Java have grown out of the hype stage, so publication cycles have gotten longer (as well as release cycles for tools and libraries, and new language versions). There’s less need for new books as a result, but those books also carried the hype (at least in part), and were written usually by the authors of those tools and libraries or people close to them, the software and books driving downloads/sales of each other.

If tool/library authors perceive a platform to be past the hype stage, they go slower with their releases, thus their publications also go slower (and those living off those frequent publications, each often poorly written and printed in relatively small volumes, may well abandon the platform and repeat their trick on a new platform, as was apparent when the Ruby hype started several years ago with a flood of books from previous Java authors about migrating from Java (which they’d previously called very good and now called suddenly fundamentally flawed) to Ruby (which was now of course perfect when they’d prior completely ignored it or even ridiculed it).

 

Seeing those patterns, I have to question the assertion that authors write what readers ask for. I think it’s at least in part the other way around, authors creating (together with marketing people) the market that readers (especially those eager to always have the latest and greatest rather than stick to proven tech and wait out the hypes to see which mature and which don’t) enter to purchase those books deliberately.

 

Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Dave Thomas
Verzonden: vrijdag 27 mei 2011 3:57
Aan: [email protected]
Onderwerp: Re: [pragprog] What's up with C++ (books)?

 






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