On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, John Adams wrote:
> On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 04:12 PM, John Von Essen wrote:
>
> > I actually think the O'Reilly books are BAD for beginners.
>
> I strongly disagree, so far as the actual beginners' books (Learning
> Perl et al) are concerned. (Don't interpret that as a silent slam on
> the other books.)
>
> But to ****ft the topic:
>
> I watch the O'Reilly Top 25 Bestsellers list fairly carefully, and have
> been somewhat disturbed to see that Learning Perl Objects, References
> and Modules barely hit the list for a week or two, then dropped off.
> That surprised me--I assumed there were a fairly large number of Perl
> users at exactly the right intermediate level for that book to be of
> interest to them.
>
> So why didn't that book sell better?
I can think of several reasons:
1. Most Perl Programmers don't actively utilize Objects and Modules,
(possibly not even references) despite the fact that they are highly
useful. It's like most Excel users don't use or know Visual Basic for
Applications, despite the fact that it's also very useful. (even most
books about Excel don't teach it).
Thus, while knowing what these things are, they may not be interested to
buy a book about the subject.
2. References, Objects and Modules are explained quite well in the Perl
core documentation, and an interested Perl programmer can learn them from
that.
3. When a person buys a book about Perl he expects this book to teach him
everything there is about Perl, and would not buy into a follow-up book.
4. It is possible that those programmers who bought Learning Perl, and
read it, later learned about these topics from other books like
"Programming Perl" or other online resources.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
[snip...]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish shlomif@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
An apple a day will keep a doctor away. Two apples a day will keep two
doctors away.
Falk Fish
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