What Kind of Books do You Want? 942
ctrimble asks: "I'm the acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company (not the one with the animals, but we have had six of our books reviewed favourably, here on Slashdot) and part of my job is to determine what books my company should publish. This consists, mainly, of me sitting in my apartment eating peanut butter sandwiches, reading Slashdot,
and writing perl scripts that generate titles in a Madlibs type fashion: "Hacking Ruby for Midgets" (forthcoming in July). Unfortunately, there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between my methodology and filling the needs of the programming community. Market research is tough to do in tech books since you need to forcast about a year in advance. So, let me pose the question to you -- what kind of books do you want? What spots do you see as needing to be filled? For that matter, do you even want dead-tree books, or are eBooks and/or online documentation sufficient?"
Dead trees are nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Good ones (Score:3, Insightful)
dead tree books (Score:5, Insightful)
On a side note, ancedotes are good. Most topics are usually pretty dry, so adding in a little humor can make the books more fun.
thanks
Re:dead tree books (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:dead tree books (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:dead tree books (Score:5, Insightful)
Spiral Bindings (Score:3, Funny)
Re:dead tree books (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:dead tree books (Score:3)
Since so many people have done a good job esposing why paper is good, let me point out my favorite parts of the ebooks:
- Searchable (few books have really excellent indexes)
- Updatable
- Can slap a bunch on a PocketPC, and have them for when I'm stuck some place with nothing to read, or want a quick reference.
- Can cut-and-paste (code examples really suck without an ebook. Also great for quoting bits in emails.)
...and I'm trying really hard to not plug my next book, which should be available in electronic format at the publisher site in about 10 days or so. I should be working on it instead of reading Slashdot....
Dead trees are the only way to go (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dead trees are the only way to go (Score:3, Insightful)
I like to see books with a lot of meat and less fluff. There needs to be more books with good examples, and not just books where the examples are taken from the online text. I want the code examples to demostrate the concept(s) being learned. I am sick of reading a book only to learn the program examples to demonstrate the concept(s) were taken from online text provided with the code and/or libraries. These examples tend to be out of date and/or very simple examples that a monkey could figure out.
Another topic would be ODBC 3.x on Unix platforms. I have a general book on ODBC, but it isn't a good resource for programming ODBC on Unix platforms.
Definitely want dead tree books (Score:2, Redundant)
What kind? Zope, and other web application servers are an area of interest. Hmmm, sorry, can't think of any other interests that aren't met by the Books With The Animals On The Covers. Heck, I've got 5 of those within arms reach right now.
Re:Definitely want dead tree books (Score:2, Insightful)
As for content: there's only one thing worse than humourless books, it's books with badly-written, forced humour. Especially if the book is a reference book; something that seems quite funny the first time really gets on your tits when you've to flick through the chapter for the nth time. So no jokes in chapters on regular expressions, please.
Other than that: the real-life example is far too underutilised, in my experience. How I Configured Apache And Why My httpd.conf Looks Like This and Leaves These Options Out is a trifle unwieldy for a title, but it'd be a very handy book to have.
A short list: (Score:5, Informative)
Programming Gnome
Perl 6, it's not your father's Perl
Ruby, for exceptionally tall people
Linux kernel, line by line
Programming C#
Programming for Mono
AtheOS, line by line
Embedded systems in C
And so on and so on.
Dancin Santa
Re:A short list: (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows Administrator's guide to Red Hat Linux
Something that'd use the knowledge that many Windows NT/2000/XP domain administrators already have, but relate it to the Linux way of doing things. Have the book set up so that you look to the area you'd find the equivalent setting in Windows, and it'd tell you what the Red Hat equivalent was.
I'm not trying to say Red Hat is the only distribution, and I actually prefer debian myself, but it's the most widely known, and would be a good place to start for a book like this.
Such a book would be nice, because it could be written above the "Linux for dummies" level, since it would assume the reader has some technical skills, but would ease the transition to a new system.
I do Windows support for a living, and there are a lot of things that I can do quite quickly in Windows, but I wind up kind of lost trying to find them in Linux, even simple things like changing the resolution/refresh rate/color depth of my display.
Linux for Windows Administrators (already exists) (Score:3, Informative)
Sybex already has a book that covers Linux written for Win Admins. It's 'Linux for Windows NT/2000 Administrators', ISBN 0-7821-2730-4.
It's very well reviewed at Amazon.
-C
How about "Windows for Unix Admins" (Score:5, Interesting)
There are books that attempt to explain simple Linux tasks to Windows users, but don't seem to be any books that discuss advanced Windows topics to Linux/Unix users. E.g., I know that the "system tray" is similar to our
Add these books to the list! (Score:4, Insightful)
GCC Internals: How it works/How to modify it. - Have you ever looked at this heaping mess of code? I would love to play around with it, but the learning curve is too high to just jump in.
Linux/Unix Lowlevel Programming: Ok there are bunchs of crappy assembly programming books out there... by chapter 12 they have covered what a register is. I don't want the most basic stuff I wanna know exactly how the linker works, I wanna know how stack frames are setup. How ELF binaries are loaded. What assembly code is needed to bind it all together. Sure I can piece most of it together from web sites, the kernel and other sites, but it is hard to put it all together.
Programming KDE 3: QT and KDE are awsome, I do a little bit of development with QT/KDE now, but there is just some documentation that cannot be found...
Architectures of Popular Linux Apps: A book that does an overview of the architectures behind popular linux applications, with a little bit of discussion about thier architecture and implementation, maybe mixed with a little theroy. For instance an chapter on apache, X11, SSH, postfix, php, konqueror, mozilla... This would be really good at helping linux developers dive into existing projects. You could even solicit open-source authors to provide an overview of thier project architecture and ask them to discuss how what thier biggest challenges where, why the did so and so.. This could really boost participation in certain projects.
Using GNU Development Tools: A book that details how to use GDB, gprof, gcov, ld, ar, and etc. effectively with all the options and do-dads. Maybe cover other tools like DDD, Electric Fence, etc.
Oh yeah! These need to be in paper form! Screw electronic form, it sucks to read.
celer
Re:A short list: (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, MORE LDAP BOOKS PLEASE.
More CISSP options would be great too.
Re:A short list: (Score:3, Interesting)
Specifically I'd be interesting in the Bonobo aspects of GNOME. Perhaps a book looking at Bonobo in comparison with COM and the Star Office object model.
What book do I need? (Score:5, Funny)
Moderators: That is a joke.
Re:What book do I need? (Score:5, Funny)
Right. For you it might just be a joke; What about the rest of us who would actually buy -and- use such a book?
No no no - Dating with SQL (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No no no - Dating with SQL (Score:5, Funny)
Empty set (0.07 sec)
Re:No no no - Dating with SQL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No no no - Dating with SQL (Score:5, Funny)
Using OpenLDAP (Score:5, Informative)
-rp
Books I want (Score:5, Insightful)
I use java as an example, but I really would like it in all languages.
Re:Books I want (Score:2, Interesting)
-j
Sounds like this... (Score:4, Informative)
Here ya' go (Score:5, Informative)
Essential C++ by Herb Sutter.
The comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup ran a series of problems from the moderately thoughtful to the downright fugly, entitled "Guru of the Week" and contributed to by the best of the online C++ community. About 50 of the GotW article were then pulled into a book and published.
For C++ in general, get everything (right now, about 8 books) from the new "C++ In-Depth" series. Stroustrup is the series editor; Essential is one of the titles. The idea behind the series is to get away from the massive 1200-page MFC tomes meant solely to generate revenue for the publisher; all books in the In-Depth series must be less than 300 pages long (main body). Short, clear, and to the point.
A book by John Carmack! (Score:2)
It doesn't matter *what* topic. Whatever he wants you to write about.
He can talk about hardware design.
Software design.
Cross platform design.
Optimization.
Algorithms.
Graphics trends.
Project management.
Racing.
I'd be interested.
how-to books (Score:4, Funny)
jakarta books? (Score:2, Insightful)
Another Vote For Dead Trees (Score:2)
I buy about two book per year. Generally, I like books that offer a little theory. I've been programming for a while, and a book on "language X" isn't so interesting, while "Some Application with Language X" is nice because then I get to learn some theory while gaining an understanding of a the language.
OK here goes... :) (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Learning VB.Net for Java Programmers
2. Migrating from Linux to Windows
3. basically anything on
ebooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking personally, I am more than happy to continue buying the occasional dead tree computer book, provided that it is really up to date (not easy with fast moving topics like Linux).
something to keep tabs on those jakarta people (Score:2, Insightful)
there are a lot of exciting things going on with the jakarta people, we need more documentation on that stuff, including ant, jMeter, log4j, tomcat, etc...
this [http://www.rickhightower.com/JavaXPToolkit/] book does a pretty good job but we need more.
THINNER books (Score:5, Insightful)
and on that note: (Score:5, Interesting)
- No CD-ROMs full of code when a Web site would do the job better
If I must spend oodles of money on a computer-programming book, I'd prefer it be the smallest quantity of oodles possible.
That's one of the reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Reference vs. Learning books (Score:3, Insightful)
As for "learning" books, if it has to be 1200 pages, I'd rather it was broken up into smaller books in a boxed set. That way I only have to carry around a 1lb book instead of a 8lb one.
You don't need to include pictures of everything- we're smart enough that if we're not at a computer and we can't picture it in our heads, we'll come back to it when we are near a computer.
And those "HINTS", "SECRETS", "WARNINGS"- yeah, yeah, they're important, but we're not idiots- you don't need to waste so much space with fancy borders and colors and icons so it attracts our attention.
Give me a dead tree book... (Score:2, Funny)
Keep the books coming (Score:2, Insightful)
There are lots of times when i just want to see some good examples of code use, and that can be really hard to find online.
plus, i don't have a network connection in the bathroom...
Bioinformatics (Score:2, Interesting)
Technical Management Configuration (Score:4, Interesting)
-describe typical management structures
-explore how decisions are made
-attempt to aggregate and parametrize hierarchical processes, such that one can start referring to them by their "Pattern"-name shorthand.
-discuss what the managed can and cannot do to influence these decision-making structures.
I want to see: (Score:5, Funny)
2. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Linux Kernel Internals.
3. Assembly language for Dummies
4. Giving yourself a Enterprise Java Enema.
What I want (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want is the Linux Application Guide. Basically, a book that says "Here are the major Word Processors. These are the key features of each. We suggest you decide based on whether you need to do this, that or the other." Ditto browsers, Desktops, mail clients, DVD players, Instant Messaging, p2p.
Basically, I use Linux. I use KDE because I tried it and I like it. pine because I tried it and liked it. Ditto Konq, Kword, mplayer, and others. They may or may not be the best there is. They're just the first I tried that was good enough. So... help me pick my applications.
I know you don't write the books... but I've been waiting for that book, and haven't heard anything about it. I know there are problems -- time frame, distro, etc. Just try to make it distro-independent, maybe list easy distros for each app. Also, it would need a brief bit about configuration. I'm thinking two to three pages per app plus a couple screen shots. Order of five to ten apps in less than a dozen categories.
Pocket code example books (Score:5, Interesting)
I know LOTS of CS students who would buy them.
Short, specific, inexpensive, and (Score:5, Insightful)
If it claims to be a "Bible". I'm not going to buy it.
If it has source code it had better come with a CD or a link to a well-designed and fast web site.
If it doesn't have source code, I'd rather save $5 and not get a CD instead of getting a CD with demo software that is already 6 monthes out-of-date by the time the book is published.
Also, any book that begins with a "history of the computer" introduction goes back on the shelf down at Borders.
How about a book on self study (Score:5, Funny)
called Teach Yourself Teaching Yourself In 21 Days In 21 Days
Re:How about a book on self study (Score:3, Funny)
Teach Yourself Teaching Yourself In 21 Days in 22 Days
That way I can actually learn something.
regardless of what the subject ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a thought. I'd probably own more books if they were just easier to use while doing actual work.
Re:regardless of what the subject ... (Score:3, Informative)
http://letters.oreilly.com/layflat_0600.html
It's more expensive, but it makes very nice manuals.
Re:regardless of what the subject ... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an excellent suggetion and I hope Cliff pays attention to this one and can have some influence here. Regular soft bound books that I actually use fall apart after awhile. Sure, a few pages might get ripped out of a very roughly used spiral book, especially if the covers are not heavy enough (please have covers of sufficiet weight not to be ripped off when being yanked out of backpack) but that is nothing like having the binding of the book disintegrate. Also, being able to have book lie flat is a big plus.
well (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're just talking about programming, there are enough language tutorials around, maybe something on the difficulty level of an intro book, but on software engineering?
If you're talking about technical/scientific books in general there's a lot of classics that should be reprinted (like Buckminster Fuller's stuff, or Norbert Wiener's), but if you're talking along the lines of purely technical, computer-related books, you probably wouldn't be interested.
If I may be so bold... (Score:2)
1. General orientation to the various KOffice suite
2. Programming with the latest version of Qt/KDE
3. Scripting for KOffice using Python
4. Using KParts components
5. A section on database access (Qt components, Rekall, etc.)
6. A KDevelop primer
That's it for now. Even if it was only in a cookbook format with a reference it'd be great. I like it dead tree with online errata/examples/discussions, etc.
The reason why I think this could help is because it would allow the possibility of migrating an office automated with another (you can probably guess which one) Office Suite over to alternatives that are more "free", or starting a new one knowing all the potential for automation later on.
Dead Tree Books Rule (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever subject I am currently interested in gets my money. Lately it's been OpenGL and game programming (especially math). In the last 3 months I've purchased or recieved for X-mas (by request):
OpenGL Game Programming
Programming Linux Games
3D Math For Game Programmers
Physics For Game Programmers
Tk/TCL For Real Programmers
3D Game Engine Design
DNS and BIND
SSH (the O'Reilly one)
Game Programming Gems 2
and a few more.
So, what am I looking for?
It depends what I am interested in today. Right now I need a really good C++ STL reference book.
I also need a math primer. I haven't thought about math since my aborted attempt at college 12 years ago. While I did get an A in Calculus, that was 12 years ago and I remember nothing. The 3D Math book I mentioned above pretty much assumes you already know Calc.
It seems to me that there are alot of beginning programming books, especially about game design and C++, but few advanced books.
Also, there are few game AI books out there, but I see on Amazon that there are 2 promising titles to be released in the next few months.
One of my favorite programming books of all time is The Perl Cookbook. Now, I make my living programming Perl on Linux, and this book gets cracked open by me at least once a week. I've even seem comments in other people's code that said "If you don't understand this next bit, see the Cookbook page xxx". A Cookbook type thing for C++ would really be cool.
Alright. Lunchtime. Off to Fry's.
-geekd
My request: cross-platform programming books (Score:2)
spiral binding.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Lisp books needed! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a Lisp programmer (Allegro CL [franz.com] mostly), so naturally I would like to see more books covering Lisp. I'd specifically like to see the following topics covered:
I'd really like to find more practical Lisp examples on bookstore shelves.
Oh, and before I hear "Lisp can't do that", here's a short list of Lisp success stories:
I want a history book (Score:2)
But I expect it will take more than a year to write that...
I'm still working on providing material for chapter one.
Feel free to mod me down into oblivion. I'm just cranky and unproductive today.
Development Books (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm looking for more cutting edge development kind of books. XML-RPC, PHP, PHP-GTK and any other web/internet high level coding language.
Give me something new, something cutting edge, something that I can read/browse through, and will help me pick up new languages quickly and make me more efficient.
Teach yourself books- (Score:2, Interesting)
ANd im quite happy with electonic verisons, as long as theyre vaguely palm friendly.
A small book on unix/linux administration. (Score:2)
Definitely dead tree (Score:2)
Regarding content, I don't want a book for idiots. The book that taught me C++ was: "C++ for Dummies - Quick Reference". It's not a typical "For Dummies" book, it assumes who can program, but need a refresher. For people who have already been programming (in -any- language) a book on syntax is more than enough.
Furthermore, a great addition would be a set of projects with increasing difficulty and source code.
Theory is great, but it doesn't teach you real-world problems. And most people can't think up basic projects to learn certain concepts. (For example, using the Josephus problem to teach circular linked lists).
That's just my 1.5 cents worth.
For those of us who fly often... (Score:2)
P.S. I would always rather dog-ear a book than make a bookmark on an Ebook, and resume reading there. Plus, I can read books when I go camping, a time when I don't bring any computers with me.
P.P.S. While we are on the subject: Geeks, think about how many trees were cut down to make all those nifty O'Reilly reference books. Take some time out of your day, and plant a tree. It helps.
dead trees (Score:3, Insightful)
With that said, it's also useful to make the content available online if possible, as an abridged reference if nothing else. It's really handy for when you don't have the book handy and just want to look up "hey, how did they do that trick again?"
As for subjects I'd like to see? I prefer books that don't neccesarily focus on a single library (everything you ever needed to know about gtk!). While useful as reference manuals, the same thing is generally online. Focus instead on using some combination of libraries to come up with a useful working environment for whatever it is you're aiming for, be that quick apps, huge apps, games, or what have you.
I want hemp books! (Score:5, Funny)
That and I'd love to see some idiot try to smoke a book.
Re:I want hemp books! (Score:4, Informative)
Hemp can be used to replace wood pulp paper, and we're cutting down our planet's forests at a suicidal rate. Hemp can be used as a domestically produced, renewable fuel, and yet we fight wars over foreign oil and pollute the atmosphere with it.
J2EE books (Score:3, Insightful)
Satellites (Score:2, Interesting)
1) inexpensive,
2) not a textbook, and
3) covers the topic from a high level (basic information) to mid level installer/integrator). I don't need the math involved.
All I've found are propellerhead type textbooks (at $80+). I want the Cliff's Notes version
Chris
Books vs. Ebooks (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does it have to be an either-or?
The advantages of a book are:
The advantages of an e-book are:
The advantages of online material are:
Can't these all just "get along"???
JavaDoc (Score:2, Insightful)
A dead-tree version would be great, provided it was full of accurate cross-indexes (pages numbers, etc). I would love something like this for C++.
The php.net documentation isn't half bad either.
Lastly, my one major gripe about books and references in general is their lack of examples, or the over-complication of examples. For instance, Sun's examples for threading all involve Swing, which accounts for 90% of the code. If you don't understand Swing, you're lost. A lot of little, simple, relevant examples and an explanation of what's happening would be great.
And this applies to more than just programming languages. I would have killed for something like this when I was learning Bind and OpenLDAP.
Make it comprehensive--full disclosure of APIs down to protected fields and methods, and examples, examples, examples. Make stuff easy to find, and make it worthwhile, and you've got my money.
kerberos (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02013792
Subtopics:
- configuring kerberos in various types of network configurations. Case study sort of analysis of how kerberos has actually been deployed in real world installations. Including the applications that use it.
- How and what applications it integrates with.
- How and/or to what extent can the MIT krb5 implementation be integrated w/ windows 2000.
- How to kerberize an application. Best practices/strategies for integration.
jason
Advantages of Dead Tree Books (Score:5, Interesting)
- No power source needed.
- Less fragile.
- Less chance of data loss through accident or negligence.
- Losing one physical book denies access to that book; losing your eBook reader denies access to all eBooks.
- They smell nice.
- They look pretty lining bookshelves.
Disadvantages?Dead Tree Books (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the current controversy with 'digital rights management' and the stability, availability, and durability of various electronic media, I much prefer hardcopy paper books to ebooks. Paper is more convenient, can be photocopied when I need a snippet from a manual, and does not depend on expensive hardware, spotty power supplies, or the largess of a publishing company that wants me to pay for each time I read the book.
As for which books I'll be looking for, that varies a lot. My current interest list includes:
Is any of this helpful?
A grand encyclopedia of neat algorithms... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of these days I'll write that encyclopedia.
Content Management (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe looking at some of the more established systems (Story server, Spectra), but also looking at Jakarta, Tomcat, Velocity, Jetspeed and Turbine.
books for the kids who were lazy back in school.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem whenever I involve myself with coding something is getting knowledge about all the other vital pieces to programming, various algorithms, methods of structuring a program, stuff like that.
See, for those kids who managed to push themselves through college all think this is easy stuff.. linked lists, random numbers, event based programming, hashing, and so on (have a firm grasp of these concepts, just using them as examples). That's what they paid to go to school for. But for the rest of us who're trying to cut a living and can't easily do the school thing anymore, a "teach yourself" book or books educating the more abstract parts of programming would be a major help.
Some of this is documented, slightly, on the web or in existing open sourced projects. But most of it reads like class notes at best, and I have yet to find good books that go over these sorts of things. The information is there, but it's not presented in a manner that's easy to absorb.
As an example, oreilly did a book a while back called 'Practical Programming in C'. That was a step in the right direction. It was an easy read, but taught a lot of really useful C concepts that most people take for granted. As far as it went, it was immensely valuable to me both as a reference and a tutor.
Basically, there's a niche between API references and language syntax books that seems horribly unfilled. I'd buy books immediatley if they seemed to fall in that category.
Xfree86 (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of what I've seen written about X is a short overview in a "Learning Linux" book or 7 volume programming manuals. There doesn't seem to be anything in between. The book should explain, in detail, the X config files, the startup files, stuff to do with the client and server. Maybe touch on window managers.
Answer questions such as "Can I just run one X server on my network instead of on every host to save disk space?" or "Can I display a window running on one host on another host?".
I think it's safe to say (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's safe to say that we don't want (or need) any more "How to Be An Unleashed Dummy In 21 Days" books.
Rather than Yet Another Computer Book that simply cats the "--help" into a book, I'd like to see a revolution in the computer book template. Oh, sure, a book that explains what each and every function in PHP does is helpful, but I can get that online.
How about a case study book? A series of case study books?
I'd like to see a section in every book titled, "These things will likely shaft you".
Fictionalize a manual. The Adventures of Nerd Man. (okay, this one is reachy)
Best yet, I'd like to read a book that doesn't have this damn phrase in it: "... but that is beyond the scope of this book..." Usually, that's the part that I'm stuck on.
You can probably get a thousand concepts from just reading HOWTOs and grepping for that phrase. Those are the parts where the medium-level people (most of the population) are stuck.
Re:I think it's safe to say (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I know it's sun/solaris specific, but their Sun Blueprints line is rather nice. They're short, they go over some of the basics, and the break it down to 2 or 3 case studies using some of the top solutions for the given problem.
I have the one on Enterprise backup, and while it's not something that I'd give to someone who wanted to understand a specific product, it's great when you're doing product analysis.
In the line, there are "Datacenter Layout", "Enterprise Backup", "Boot disk layout", "Designing Enterprise Solutions with Sun Cluster 3.0", etc etc.
Webpage: http://www.sun.com/blueprints/
Some sample chapters are online as well.
Thinner, cheaper books. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd also like to see more in the way of method books, rather than subject books. ie, something that teaches how to program rather than how to program in a specific language. possibly case books, that show how to get around certain problems. I'd like to see books less revolved around programs, and more to the topic of methods and strategies. It might not require a person to buy a new $50 book every week for every different program, but it will make a better book.
Suggestions, Opinions (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see:
- More books with the flexible bindings (ala Oreilly). Books that don't lay flat suck.
- More "Cookbook" style books, as long as they are truly thorough and diverse (see Perl Cookbook for a good example).
Essentially, system engineers like to see short code snippets of how to accomplish odd tasks in a quick, easy manner. Again, when stuff's broken, or data needs to be pulled pronto, I'm not going to wade through man pages, etc.
- I don't favor the Nutshell style books, they're usually poorly organized and don't comprise enough of the "right" information.
- More quality assurance. Too many books these days are rushed out to market way too quickly. I'd rather buy a book that's good quality, rather than "quickest out". Most of us customers read Amazon.com reviews to get an idea of what books to buy on a particular subject. Keep that in mind.
- Topics I'd like to see? more advanced-level BSD stuff, more kernel hacking stuff, LDAP, you can never have too many Perl books. Think about stuff your target audience would love to see. Oreilly is great for doing this, see: "CGI Programming with Perl", "Perl for System Administration", etc
More 'Like The Pros'-type books... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tradeoffs, design choices, speed enhancements, math optimizations, etc., that sort of thing. A book where the writer sits in with a game development team on a project and shows the code along with the thought process behind the code itself. Giving formulas for physics equations is great, but showing how developers in the real world use them and how they use them to animate their objects would be even better.
Unix Hackers Guide to Mac OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
Unix Hackers Guide to Mac OS X
Written for the experienced Unix user who is unfamiliar with the mac life. Various topics might include things like:
- How the Aqua configuration dialogs interface with basic system configuration files.
- Where configuration information is stored.
- Where to find mounted volumes in the filesystem.
- Command line alternatives to GUI-level actions (specifically configuration type things, not just file manipulation)
- use of the 'defaults' command
- enabling the root account
- "Where is gcc/cc?!"
- How network interfaces are managed (including how this interracts with the 'Locations' dialog and autoconfigure functions. What process mantains this? (i'm still looking for an answer to this one))
- Modifying bootup scripts in a 'safe' way that will survive an OS update.
There are countless other possible topics. Basically everything the experienced unix hacker needs to know in order to quickly become comfortable with Mac OS X.
-acet
History (Score:4, Interesting)
Books on genuises are cool. I did an essay once, and it was facinating. The public thinks that genuises are born with some 'gift' (thanks Good Will Hunting, thanks A Beautiful Mind). The truth is that most genuises have a very interesting history of focus, drive, and luck. I would love to spend a few hours reading about Bill Joy, what an ass kicker.
Books I want and Might Write (Score:3, Interesting)
This book teaches a non-programmer with no experience what sorts of questions to think in terms of when trying to write software. It shows how to think of things in a modular, abstracted way. It also shows how to make simple data structures. I am imagine it as a companion to a nutshell book for a intro CS course or a person trying to learn on their own.
Concise Sexy C
A book that impresses tons of C idioms that make code smaller, simpler to read, self-documenting, and usually faster. From ugly to elegant. Gives good questions to ask yourself to pare down code to a more simple, elegant form.
Developing Beauty-Sense
How to gain the experiences necessary in a craft to tell what's "beautiful" in that sphere of creation. How to watch a pratictioner of the field to tell what is beautiful in your design and what is an ugly hack. That is the stage where you know that you really have a skill down to the point where you are respectable, or at least on the road to being so. This book could be on a paticular skill, or general. Either way I would kill for it.
Coding Standards: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Have you ever spent days going through "updating code documention" after a project because there was too much to change while you went along? Have you ever just plain ignored the standard becuase it didn't tell anyone anything important? Have you ever seen standards where there were often 3 times as many MANDATED boilerplate lines of comments above functions as there were lines of code in the function? Have you ever seen standards for Java and C++ written by C programmers with no understanding of OO principles? This book is for you. It goes over what adds to programmer productivity and what takes away. It shows how to write tools to make documentation of functions and classes painless. It shows how to use existing tools like "indent" to also help documentation efforts. There are special sections near the end that have full bodied examples of good, bad and ugly coding standards from the real world. In these sections there is commentary about why these standards are bad or good, and what goals they are trying to accomplish. Bomus material on explaining the implications of a coding standard to your boss.
Debian Linux Administrator's Guide (Score:5, Interesting)
a book on using gnu tools for managing projects (Score:4, Interesting)
Practical functional programming (Score:5, Insightful)
While the audience may be limited, I think there's a screaming need for such a book within that audience; almost all existing FP texts are way off in theory-land, and most predate the huge boom of the web, which is a natural environment for functional languages.
An added benefit for a publisher is that this particular technology landscape changes slowly, so the book will have a long shelf life, and is at no risk of being obsolete before it's released.
Re:Practical functional programming (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't just want to know how to program with functional languages in the real world. I'd like to be able to link C/C++ code with functional code. I've discovered that functional languages are great for the things imperative languages are terrible for, and vice versa.
If I could link the two together, I might actually succeed in being able to use the Right tools for the Job.
Books for Non-Dummies (Score:3, Insightful)
When I pick a new language (especially if it's just YAPL -- Yet Another Procedural Language -- of the C/C++/Perl/Java/etc. variety) I don't want to wade through pages and pages explaing basics of syntax -- I can pick it up quicky on my own. I also don't want to have if..then..else construct explained to me for the nth time, unless there is something fancy about it.
What I want is a conscise explanation of the mode of thinking that the language was designed to go with. I want to know which idioms people who write in that language use, and why *this* way of doing things is cooler/neater/a win. I want to get a feel for the language.
For example, in Perl the camel book, besides reference stuff, provides a lot of advice and examples of Ways Things Are Usually Done In Perl, along with explanations or at least hints why this is generally accepted to be The Right Thing. The camel book (and writings by Larry Wall in general) provide a wonderful feel for the flavor of Perl and why it's not just interpreted C with a loose syntax (we'll leave the fine distinction between Perl and line noise for another time).
I've been looking for a similar book about Java with utter lack of success. Either it's introduction to programming for novices, or a libraries' reference guide. The closest I've found was a book by Bruce Eckel -- Thinking in Java, I think it was called -- but even that wasn't all that good.
Lisp people understand perfectly that thinking while coding in Lisp is radically different from thinking while coding in C/C++/etc. I want these differences in thinking, in flavor, in idiom, to be shown to me for many different languages, starting from Java and Python and Eiffel, and ending with Haskell and Oberon and Intercal.
Dearth of *Entry Level* Books for Programming (Score:3, Insightful)
Two decades ago, computer user and programmer were pretty much synonmous. But today, things are different. Believe it or not, there are a lot newbies that are just now getting interested in software development after being computer users for quite a while. Looking for a book on Java programming that assumes no programming experience? You can probably find it, but it's not exactly easy.
Want a book to learn Mac OS X Cocoa programming? You better hope you have C++ or Java experience, otherwise you're simply out of luck. There are no entry-level Cocoa books. Same for WebObjects. Developers themselves aren't at all concerned about this, of course. They expect everyone to follow the same path they did.
Believe it or not, a lot of people do not want to read a *full* book before even cracking the book actually pertains to Mac OS X development. Additionally, not everyone is interested in become career software developers. They may just want to try it out as a hobby first. I hear from all sorts of people that just got Mac OS X and want to learn how to use those free development tools that Apple provides. There's no well-suited path for that. Why should you have to learn all sorts of general C theory when all you want to do is learn the stuff that pertains to Mac OS X development? This turns potential developers off, which is sad.
The Visual QuickStart series by Peachpit Press [peachpit.com] is the only series that I have seen that is consistently good at addressing this problem. As far as I can tell, the series is rapidly expanding.
Here's a crazy idea: how about a book that teaches you Java or C with the intention of writing Mac OS X apps? How about a Java servlet book that doesn't assume you're transitioning from C++? How about making this books readible and more practical than theory-oriented?
Lower the barrier to entry.
- Scott
Re:Yes, I want DEAD TREES! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes, I want DEAD TREES! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear! Hear! Paper is:
Electronic formats are okay when you need to provide documentation to a whole bunch of people but most people I know still like having a paper copy and cite the reasons above as why.
Paper also is... (Score:3, Interesting)
What I would have called the company up to say if it hadn't been based in Taiwan: Hello? I DON'T HAVE A DAMN COMPUTER! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO READ THIS MANUAL?!?
It's just a good thing that I had no trouble whatsoever installing the board. (It was a Shuttle 555A, still going after 5 or 6 years. It's now my wife's, who uses it for nothing but word processing and websurfing.)
Re:books with lots of pron (Score:5, Funny)
User annotation... (Score:3, Insightful)
While it runs just fine and dandy, quite a bit of the documentation is geared toward users running Linux/Apache/MySQL
It was a very pleasant experience to see, down below the 'approved' text, a series of users who had already solved problems of how to get PHP to talk to MS SQL over ODBC, which dll's you needed, how to edit your php.ini so that it works *just* right, etc...
Shared user annotation is a very wonderful thing for technical manuals of any kind. All online resources should at least consider doing things like PHP.Net has done.