I bought K&R to pay my dues, similarly the C++ book. I just look things up on the net now. On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 9:01 PM, Alex Pilon <alp [ at ] alexpilon [ dot ] ca> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 06:49:17AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > a general question for the masses -- what value do you see in > > linux books these days? > > I'll assume you mean Linux and common userland, and not the kernel > itself. > > > if people on this list still buy books, how do you judge whether > > something's worth purchasing? what do you look for? > > * Technology or trend du jour-agnostic. Books about learning Python 2.x > are to be avoided since they'll be obsolete soon. Ditto for books on > the latest web framework, desktop, distro, etc. In other words… > * Focused on concepts and so on rather than implementations of these > concepts, though case studies thereof are acceptable provided that the > learning exercise doesn't require too much use of said implementation. > E.g., a book about programming language design that touches on BASIC > is fine as long as I don't lose much of the worth of the book if I > can't or don't want to play [1] with BASIC. Ditto for a book on > cryptography that compares and contrasts TLS and SSH. > * If implementation-focused: > * Must be about technology that will stand the test of time. E.g., > a study of the engineering of various computer architectures, or > (to some extent), the design of one of the original influential > Unices. > * Either: > * Must be a compendium of scattered knowledge that is otherwise > a bother to aggregate and filter, or must provide a not > readily available angle on the matter. > * Must be to provide an update on best current practice that > would be otherwise hard to gleam from readily available but > still widely referenced documentation, and must provide an > immediate benefit. Had a certain Tkinter-focused site not > existed, a *small* book on modern Tk programming would have > been acceptable. The same could be said of a C++ book [2] on > modern practices, esp. in light of C++ 11 and maybe touching > on C++ 14 and the ideas espoused in some of the proposals. > * Reasonably priced. I don't buy 70$ books unless they transcend the > currently related technology and are packed. Alternatively, if the > book is a reasonable alternative to certain university courses that I > would object to for various reasons (e.g., too much boilerplate, full > of Java crud, etc.), and maybe has a few *interesting* and stimulating > exercises [3], there would be some value, esp. compared to a > few-hundred-dollar course with a name conceived more for marketing > rather than accuracy an descriptiveness and poorly vetted TAs. > * DRM-free, preferrably PDF. > > Alternatively, the book could be an interesting story: interviews with > the designers of some interesting programming languages, thoughts from > some **exceptional** programmers on code they particularly liked, etc. > > > […] > > > > * available in e-form > > [1]: Quite the case here. > > [2]: I'm not a C++ programmer. The assumption in this context would be > for somebody like a student that just learned incidentally as part > of their university or college education, esp. if from some likely > outdated reference matter (big, slow-to-publish, overpriced large > textbooks). > > [3]: Like certain books on purely functional programming, though half > the challenge was the language itself, not the purely functional > programming. > > Regards, > > Alex Pilon > > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux > > -- *Pick a good wife and you will die a happy man. * *Pick a bad wife and you will become a philosopher. *