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

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Michael Schuerig <[email protected]
> wrote:

>   ....
>
Curiously, I get a confirming impression when looking at book
> publications. Around 2005 seems to mark the end of interest in C++.
> Since then there has been the odd introduction (e.g. Stroustrup; more an
> intro to programming than C++, I gather) and a few platform-specific
> books (Windows, Qt). Yes, three books on Boost do exist, two of them
> already pretty old. On the more advanced side there's Stepanov's
> "Elements of Programming", if that counts as a C++ book. Very recently
> there are Reddy's "API Design for C++" (recommended) and Williams's "C++
> Concurrency in Action" (beta ebook, paper forthcoming). And that's about
> all, as far as I can tell.
>
> Perhaps my expectations are skewed, but for a major programming language
> I was expecting much more. Announcements of new editions of classics by
> Stroustrup and Meyers, several new books on libraries and programming
> style. Something noteworthy.
>

Hi Michael,

I've worked in Java and Ruby, but I'm currently working alongside two C++
teams. They're smart people, but I've never met a more not-book-buying-bunch
in my life. They rarely go to conferences, don't read blogs and don't keep
up on the "latest greatest" cool stuff. They're generally keeping up on the
latest chipset errata from Intel or AMD, or tinkering with new DSPs, or...

I don't mean to disparage them, because as I said before, they're very
smart, but they also remind me of the "tribal knowledge" culture that I saw
in programming in the 90s. They talk to each other to learn a lot more than
they buy books... and they spend a lot of time heads down, writing and
debugging.

Jared