Re: Publishing (what would you pay for?)

From: Alisdair Meredith (alisdair.meredith_at_no-spam-splease@uk.renaultf1.com)
Date: 08/01/04 

Date: 1 Aug 2004 13:59:30 -0700

Lord Crc wrote:

> I've almost stopped buying books because i find it hard to find medium
> - advanced level books. I haven't learned a single thing (at least,
> almost nothing) from language specific books. Now i buy perhaps one
> (fullprice) book a year, if i find one. Might just be me though :)

I guess I'm lucky to be spoilt by riches <g>
The C++ market is doing quite well with intermediate/advanced books,
with 2 or 3 'must have' titles coming out each year.

On top of that there the general purpose software development books.
Patterns, UML-related stuff, agile practices and the like. I am still
filling a back-log here so again I can guarantee 2 or 3 'must have'
purchases each year.

I will usually throw in an oddball purchase. This year it is a book on
language design. Terrific stuff, and I can now read examples of
fibonacci generators in C, C++, Pascal, ML, Java, Ada, ...
Actually, it is fun comparing the trade-offs of different paradigms,
Imperative, OO, functional, logic etc.
And I can finally write (E)BNF! [Of course, any attempt to do so
rapidly scares work into assigning that task to someone else <g>]

Good technical books are out there, if you keep your eyes open and just
want to learn. The problem comes (I find) when you go looking for a
book on a specific topic today, right now. Luckily for me, by the time
I need some specific information, there is usually something in my
library that can cover the situation, but it took 2 or 3 years to get
reasonable coverage.

And I agree there is a shortage of quality Delphi material on the same
level as the C++ that's been published over the last 5 years or so.
OTOH, you don't have the gallons of really bad C++ material that has
also been published and conceals it.

Still not sure what an advanced Delphi book would like like though,
sure be fun to find out <g> My guess would be some highly
adaptive/configurable systems built around properties, event,
interfaces and extensive use of RTTI to construct smart systems on the
fly. Yes, metaprogramming in Delphi sounds fun already <g>

AlisdairM(TeamB)

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