Re: Developers don't buy books anymore?

From: Gbenga Abimbola (gabimbola_at_columbus.gov)
Date: 03/28/05 

Date: 28 Mar 2005 13:36:11 -0800

Delphi for .NET is a new product, and as such, I expect to see
many books on it. But guess what? It takes for ever to find
anyone!

But I was lucky to find one: Delphi for .NET Developer's Guide
by Xavier Pacheco (SAMS), and there were two of them on the
book store's shelf at the time. The rest of the books
were on C# or VB.NET.

Book publishers want to make money, and C# (or VB.NET) is hot!
VB.NET is not VB, so it is on the same league as C#, Delphi for
.NET and even Java (if multiplatform capability is not added).
And as such it is attracting a lot of developers. Other than
the curly braces of the elegant C#, you can just do about
anything in VB.NET that you can do in C# or Delphi for .NET!

Delphi is a great language; it does not take anyone (delphi
developer) to know that C# mimics Delphi's architecture in
many ways. Thus, A good Delphite would feel at home in
C# in no time.

Regardless though, I think people will still write codes in
Delphi. With Borland trying to incorporate C++ as well into
Delphi 2005 (which I will call Delphi Studio), Delphi will
stay alive. Why? If you are a C# developer, and you happen
to buy Delphi Studio, chances that you would look at Delphi
personality is high, and you may get hooked (maybe) to it.
===================== End Of Message ===================

"Craig Stuntz [TeamB]" <craig_stuntz@nospam.please [a.k.a. acm.org]> wrote:
>Bryce K. Nielsen wrote:
>
>> Just wondering if this was true. Do we not buy books anymore?
>
> I think the model of doing a new book for every version of a dev tool
>is obsolete. (Or perhaps self-obsolescing?) I buy very few development
>books, and fewer still which are Delphi-specific. Most of my reading
>material comes from research papers in professional journals. The books
>I buy tend to be either fairly specific (e.g., Julian Bucknall's data
>structures book) or the seminal works in the field (e.g., Design
>Patterns).
>
> -Craig
>
>--
>Craig Stuntz [TeamB] . Vertex Systems Corp. . Columbus, OH
> Delphi/InterBase Weblog : http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz
>IB 6 versions prior to 6.0.1.6 are pre-release and may corrupt
> your DBs! Open Edition users, get 6.0.1.6 from http://mers.com

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