Re:Writing a Programming Book in 2021
by dhosek on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @11:34AM
(#27131506)
In technical book publishing, the publisher is a good signal as to the quality of the contents inside. I have never seen a worthwhile book from APress.
10 books from an author of technical books is a negative signal. There's not a lot of money in writing technical books so there's an incentive to pump out books without concern for quality. I remember trying to learn C++ in the 90s and nearly every book I read was complete garbage (the authors seemed to think that C++ was C with different comment syntax and using cout << in place of printf). It wasn't until I read the first STL book that things finally clicked.
10 books from an author of technical books is a negative signal. There's not a lot of money in writing technical books so there's an incentive to pump out books without concern for quality. I remember trying to learn C++ in the 90s and nearly every book I read was complete garbage (the authors seemed to think that C++ was C with different comment syntax and using cout << in place of printf). It wasn't until I read the first STL book that things finally clicked.