I love o'reilly publications, but I remain a fan of printed books. Specifically in technical texts, I like being able to scan and leaf through physical pages. If they had a special on printed books today, I would buy a couple; alas, with this special, my wallet remains closed.
As much as I agree with you, I find that the ability to run a grep (or the more commont Ctrl+F) to quickly look for what I'm looking for of very high value. I usually enjoy reading the book from front to cover, but as soon as I want to consult it again for reference, I am happy to have the computer do the search work for me.
Other than that, I often read on the (crowded) subway ride to work. Carrying a 600 page book is often a pain in the ass, compared to the lightweight feeling of my Kindle.
On the other hand, I completely relate to the pleasure of the physical page. I also enjoy very much watching my collection of books slowly expand on my shelves.
I wish there were a model where buying a physical copy of the book would entitle you to the digital one or vice-versa. I think both have their advantages in different situations.
I have access to Safari Books through my university, so this hasn't yet been a problem, but it's a fair point.
However, when I'm searching for something precise, a google search / help documentation usually suffices. When I'm reading a book, it's generally in search of more deep understanding or just the process of learning in general - i.e. more long-form learning. For the latter I would still prefer printed.
I've bought an onyx m92 ( http://www.onyx-boox.com/onyx-boox-m92 ) which has got me fairly close to this capability for reading PDFs (it's an ipad-sized device). It comes with a stylus which allows you to tap a specific point in the progress bar to change pages. Much easier than scanning back and forth using a kindle.
It's still not quite up to the standard of flipping back and forth in a book, but it's tolerable. I've also changed my reading flow to make a lot more bookmarks of interesting parts of the book, and use search more. Given the other advantages (portability, price of books) it's a solution that's working out really well for me, and allows me to read a lot more technical books than I would if I had to lug them about in print form.
I think this will interest some HN readers: Zachary Kessin's Building Web Applications with Erlang[1] is available as an early-release ebook. As an early release, the ebook price is already cheap, but combined with the 50% discount, today it's $6.49. Definitely seems worth a look.
Already have it and already visited the place in Ireland and many of the places in England based on it :-) Visiting Bletchley Park was a true formative experience for me and Alexander Fleming's lab also really hit a chord with me, recalling me reading and learning about him in my childhood. Thank you for a great book and guide (and the science explanations inside are very nice as well) :-)
In my last trip to Germany I truly enjoyed Konrad Zuse Museum[1] in Hünfeld. Many descriptions are in German, but I can truly recommend it, especially if you're with a German speaker (but even without, there are models and artifacts). Not many people (me included) know about the dawn of computer science behind Britain and the US, so it was very interesting and refreshing.
Depends on what you're into, but from the database angle:
Learning SQL is a really excellent intro, and probably covers the majority of what your average developer is going to ever need to know about SQL ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596520847.do )
SQL and Relational Theory gives you more background on relational theory - basically gives a more academic background for existing practitioners of SQL. Date is pretty dry author with a few hangups, but it's largely good solid stuff ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022879.do )
I've not read the book so can't comment on it specifically, but I can tell you about Date, who is an eminent author in the field. His 'An Introduction to Database Systems' is perhaps the best book to read if you want to get an idea of how DBMSs work internally. Anyway:
- He really dislikes SQL (His books often use Tutorial D, which is a language Date created to represent what a good relational query language would look like).
- He really hates the use of null values.
- He's of an academic bent - dryish, but still perfectly readable.
- I would say that he tends to gloss over performance issues that get in the way of ideal database schema design, viewing them as implementation issues (which is true, but in reality, all DBMS products have weaknesses, and at some point you'll probably have to make compromises in your schema design).
With this said, I would read his book. He'll tell you the best way to do things, if you ignore performance. This puts you in a good position to start out from a pure, ideal implementation from which you can compromise when you have to. I much prefer this to a less-educated ad-hoc approach.
On a related note I'd say that forget about these deals and go get yoursf a Safari Online subscription. I convinced my boss to do this for around $350 (that's the corporate rate), one of the best tool I've got. I have all their books (and from a lot of other publishers, too) at my fingertips!
Meh...I canceled my Safari Online subscription. To me it actually helps to focus on a small number of books. Also it's just painful to read on their website, compared to reading PDFs.
Another thing: this particular sale is about freedom from DRM. Safari is a joint venture between O'Reilly and Pearson. Pearson is on that list of SOPA supporters. It also feels encumbered to me, and I don't feel like I'm supporting the authors much if I read them.
I think it might be a good complement to buying eBooks but I don't think I'd read more than a couple chapters without getting it in a format that I can read without being logged into their website.
I was a Safari subscriber for two years and it was great! However, it felt a bit overwhelming at times to have access to so many books. It brought back memories of spending hours in the computer book section at the bookstore. Now I just buy the books I need and it keeps me a bit more focused -- at least when I'm not reading HN :).
Dont't know about Kindle but they have a nice app for iPad. Also, periodically you get tokens and you can get free books , I receive 5 tokens per month and there are a lot of books for 10-15 tokens.
Not sure where I fall with these books in terms of skill and knowledge. Looking through the table of contents for Learning Python I recognize everything and know what they are, but don't have a great masterful grasp of most of the stuff but I am afraid too much of it will be stuff I already know. On the flip side, Programming Python might be too advanced for me.
EDIT
Seems Programming Python is mainly geared towards Python 3.x but I'm still using 2.6.
They're looooooong. I read through "Learning Python" and came out a better Python programmer because of it, but it was an epic journey that may as well have involved hobbits and a wizard.
I also strongly disliked the author's choice of examples. In particular, the examples for metaclasses and decorators were repetitive and un-Pythonic. If you want private member functions, you're probably better off using a language like Java that supports them rather than trying to hack them in using one of the several ways explained in the book.
If you can handle the length and the trailing off of example quality near the end, it's a solid and comprehensive coverage of Python the language. In terms of the 3.x/2.x split, "Learning Python" covered both comprehensively. The differences aren't huge, and it's mostly just a matter of the example code being adapted to work in one or the other.
I can really recommend Learning Python. It's a great book, it goes into all the fundamental concepts of python really well and in a very readable manner. I read it after I had a year of experience with python and while I also recognized all the concepts, I learned a lot from the book and it's a constant reference when I need to figure out why something is the way it is in python.
I also have Programming Python, but I mainly use that for reference on some advanced topics. I hate the hundreds of pages it spend on GUI programming though...
Any comments on the iOS 5 Cookbook or Chas Emerick's Clojure book? On Chas's book, specifically I thought chapter 1 was pretty technical with very short snippets of code. Do later chapters have more code?
Chas's "Clojure Programming" book is great, and there is code throughout the book.
The book is divided into several parts: Part III "Tools, Platforms, and Projects" and part IV "Practicums" give you an overview on project patterns and structure, and this alone was worth it for me.
Excellent! Just bought another 4 books. Now I just have to find some time to read them. I should probably start buying books based on the number of pages -- shorter book wins. I seem to stay better focused on tech books with < 300 pages. Probably related to my motivation level.
I'm getting 500s all over the place, typical for their big sale days. Once the sale hits reddit, the masses descend. Usually if you just keep trying your order will make it through. But it takes a bit of patience.
Scala for the Impatient probably a better choice. Programming in Scala (not the O'Reilly book) is also good, but very long-winded. The O'Reilly book isn't too bad though, but not my first choice.
I haven't gotten far enough to give a good review, but you do know they have the whole thing online for free as an "Open Feedback Publishing System" project, right? http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449398583/
