7 ms·

Java retakes the top O'Reilly book rank in 2010

36 points by carson 16y ago

tomjen3 16y ago
I guess there are a number of people out there who are now studying Java so they can write code for Android?
- evilmushroom 16y ago
  A number of us use Java for web development as well. (GWT for example) Not to mention projects like Hadoop etc
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Wouldn't scalable be much more suitable for hadoop?
- 6ren 16y ago
  The biggest event for Java in 2010 was Oracle's acquisition of Sun. It may actually turn out to be a positive thing for Java, to be owned by a company that knows how to make money, as opposed to a company that knows how to make great technology. I've been worried sick about Java, so this turnaround is a great relief. But the 3rd best-selling title was Professional Android 2 Application Development, so that's certainly a factor.
- jshen 16y ago
  I think the jvm as a platform is having a resurgence. Java is the assembly language of that platform so to speak.
noelwelsh 16y ago
No real surprises here, except perhaps the rise of Python and the decline of Ruby. Note this undercounts sales for books covering the smaller languages. A lot of these books are self published or sold outside mainstream channels and so won't show up.
- dagw 16y ago
  Python sales where down 2010.
  - FraaJad 16y ago
    s/where/were/
  - noelwelsh 16y ago
    I was referring to the longer term trend over time, not just the difference between 2009.
- jerhinesmith 16y ago
  I wonder how much of that is due to the popularity of the language and how much is due to other publishers. I have 4 Ruby books, 3 of them are from the Pragmatic Bookshelf and the other is O'Reilly. For C# stuff, I'd probably start with O'Reilly, but for anything Ruby, PB is usually my first (and last) stop.
olalonde 16y ago
R is up 60%, SPSS up 9% [1]. I guess now would be a good time to get into the data business... [1] http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/prog_lang_tree.jpg http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/prog_lang_tree.jpg
- podperson 16y ago
  God I hope R eats SPSS for lunch.
spenrose 16y ago
If you look at http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/AllYearsLanguages.jpg http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/AllYearsLanguages.jp..., what Java did was no so much "retake the top" as "slide backwards, while watching the languages previously above it slide back further." One might go so far as to question whether "leadership" in a sinking market is a good thing.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
pauljonas 16y ago
These statistics are a bit contrived — that is, a lot is determinant on What O'Reilly decided to publish and promote in 2010. Not going to spend the time to ferret out all the "recently published" for 2010, but I do not remember any notable PHP books - published. Granted, there were some, but they do not appear to be offering anything not already in existence, especially for a now mature platform. Though, the decline of Objective C despite all the new titles might indicate that the iOS platform has peaked for now.
- btilly 16y ago
  As is clarified in the comments, these statistics are aggregated for all publishers, not just O'Reilly.
  - adw 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan (edited to add: is the canonical source of this kind of data)
  - chromatic 16y ago
    The same problem applies, however. The report would have at least some use if it accounted for the freshness of titles (given the short snout of sales), the number of titles published in a year, and the title efficiency. (Then again, I've made this criticism year after year, so I've come to take the report as chartjunk with slightly better data than TIOBE.)
btilly 16y ago
If you read the comments you'll find out that this data is for physical book sales across all publishers. Thus the decline of the overall market is almost certainly evidence for the rise of e-books (including books on demand like Safari) and not evidence that people are less interested in reading about programming languages.
- tjpick 16y ago
  I haven't been impressed by the technical offerings in the e-book market. The titles are there, but whether it's the particular reader device I have or the publishers fault, these books are terrible. Broken layout, slow load times due to large chapter sizes and counts, not being able to easily flip to different spots in the book, etc. I'm sticking to dead trees for technical stuff. (Novels, biographies etc on the other hand are great as ebooks)
Hov 16y ago
C# is the number one tagged language on stackoverflow.com. I wonder if there is some tenuous correlation there. I'm not sure I'd ever buy a programming language book now.
bobthedino 16y ago
Funny how O'Reilly's own "Learning Java" book hasn't been updated since 2005, though.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, in fairness, it's not like Java's been updated since about 2005 either :) Java 7 might be the Duke Nukem Forever of programming language releases
lpolovets 16y ago
Is anyone else really surprised that C# is a close second to Java? I'm trying to think of why it would be so popular... the number of O'Reilly C# books? The culture of .NET developers? (mild sarcasm) The ubiquity of C#? Something else?
- allwein 16y ago
  I'm not surprised at all. Pretty much all of the enterprise software development that I've seen is either Java or C#.
- adolfojp 16y ago
  The last version of Java was released in 2006. Since then Microsoft has released two new versions of C#, two new .NET frameworks, two new versions of Visual Studio and a plethora of new libraries. People buy so many C# books because there is so much new stuff to learn.
- gtani 16y ago
  I'm surprised at ".NET languages" in #11, i.e. LINQ, F#, ironPython and ironRuby
wicknicks 16y ago
Here is the Tiobe index, where again Java reigns: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
mark_l_watson 16y ago
I have been programming since the early 1960s (as a kid, I got access to timesharing basic on the arpanet) and am generally a diehard techie. Just my opinion but the JVM platform is probably the "big event" software-wise (comparing it to object oriented programming, relational databases, Lisp Machines, etc.) in my lifetime. Since Java is still the main language for the JVM, I am not surprised that Java books are still popular even though the language is getting long in the tooth.
- 6ren 16y ago
  hmm, the VM concept dates back to 1966 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine), though of course the JVM was the first to achieve wide adoption. I hear there've been many advancements in VM technology in the JVM, esp for JIT compilation, and (I don't know but) possibly these could be fundamental. I keep thinking of Alan Kay's claim that nothing significant has been invented in computer science in the last 30 years (since 1980): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

36 points by carson 16y ago

tomjen3 16y ago

I guess there are a number of people out there who are now studying Java so they can write code for Android?

evilmushroom 16y ago
A number of us use Java for web development as well. (GWT for example) Not to mention projects like Hadoop etc
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Wouldn't scalable be much more suitable for hadoop?
6ren 16y ago
The biggest event for Java in 2010 was Oracle's acquisition of Sun. It may actually turn out to be a positive thing for Java, to be owned by a company that knows how to make money, as opposed to a company that knows how to make great technology. I've been worried sick about Java, so this turnaround is a great relief. But the 3rd best-selling title was Professional Android 2 Application Development, so that's certainly a factor.
jshen 16y ago
I think the jvm as a platform is having a resurgence. Java is the assembly language of that platform so to speak.

noelwelsh 16y ago

No real surprises here, except perhaps the rise of Python and the decline of Ruby. Note this undercounts sales for books covering the smaller languages. A lot of these books are self published or sold outside mainstream channels and so won't show up.

dagw 16y ago
Python sales where down 2010.
- FraaJad 16y ago
  s/where/were/
- noelwelsh 16y ago
  I was referring to the longer term trend over time, not just the difference between 2009.
jerhinesmith 16y ago
I wonder how much of that is due to the popularity of the language and how much is due to other publishers. I have 4 Ruby books, 3 of them are from the Pragmatic Bookshelf and the other is O'Reilly. For C# stuff, I'd probably start with O'Reilly, but for anything Ruby, PB is usually my first (and last) stop.

olalonde 16y ago

R is up 60%, SPSS up 9% [1]. I guess now would be a good time to get into the data business... [1] http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/prog_lang_tree.jpg http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/prog_lang_tree.jpg

podperson 16y ago
God I hope R eats SPSS for lunch.

spenrose 16y ago

If you look at http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/AllYearsLanguages.jpg http://radar.oreilly.com/upload/2011/02/AllYearsLanguages.jp..., what Java did was no so much "retake the top" as "slide backwards, while watching the languages previously above it slide back further." One might go so far as to question whether "leadership" in a sinking market is a good thing.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

pauljonas 16y ago

These statistics are a bit contrived — that is, a lot is determinant on What O'Reilly decided to publish and promote in 2010. Not going to spend the time to ferret out all the "recently published" for 2010, but I do not remember any notable PHP books - published. Granted, there were some, but they do not appear to be offering anything not already in existence, especially for a now mature platform. Though, the decline of Objective C despite all the new titles might indicate that the iOS platform has peaked for now.

btilly 16y ago
As is clarified in the comments, these statistics are aggregated for all publishers, not just O'Reilly.
- adw 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan (edited to add: is the canonical source of this kind of data)
- chromatic 16y ago
  The same problem applies, however. The report would have at least some use if it accounted for the freshness of titles (given the short snout of sales), the number of titles published in a year, and the title efficiency. (Then again, I've made this criticism year after year, so I've come to take the report as chartjunk with slightly better data than TIOBE.)

btilly 16y ago

If you read the comments you'll find out that this data is for physical book sales across all publishers. Thus the decline of the overall market is almost certainly evidence for the rise of e-books (including books on demand like Safari) and not evidence that people are less interested in reading about programming languages.

tjpick 16y ago
I haven't been impressed by the technical offerings in the e-book market. The titles are there, but whether it's the particular reader device I have or the publishers fault, these books are terrible. Broken layout, slow load times due to large chapter sizes and counts, not being able to easily flip to different spots in the book, etc. I'm sticking to dead trees for technical stuff. (Novels, biographies etc on the other hand are great as ebooks)

Hov 16y ago

C# is the number one tagged language on stackoverflow.com. I wonder if there is some tenuous correlation there. I'm not sure I'd ever buy a programming language book now.

bobthedino 16y ago

Funny how O'Reilly's own "Learning Java" book hasn't been updated since 2005, though.

jbooth 16y ago
Well, in fairness, it's not like Java's been updated since about 2005 either :) Java 7 might be the Duke Nukem Forever of programming language releases

lpolovets 16y ago

Is anyone else really surprised that C# is a close second to Java? I'm trying to think of why it would be so popular... the number of O'Reilly C# books? The culture of .NET developers? (mild sarcasm) The ubiquity of C#? Something else?

allwein 16y ago
I'm not surprised at all. Pretty much all of the enterprise software development that I've seen is either Java or C#.
adolfojp 16y ago
The last version of Java was released in 2006. Since then Microsoft has released two new versions of C#, two new .NET frameworks, two new versions of Visual Studio and a plethora of new libraries. People buy so many C# books because there is so much new stuff to learn.
gtani 16y ago
I'm surprised at ".NET languages" in #11, i.e. LINQ, F#, ironPython and ironRuby

wicknicks 16y ago

Here is the Tiobe index, where again Java reigns: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

mark_l_watson 16y ago

I have been programming since the early 1960s (as a kid, I got access to timesharing basic on the arpanet) and am generally a diehard techie. Just my opinion but the JVM platform is probably the "big event" software-wise (comparing it to object oriented programming, relational databases, Lisp Machines, etc.) in my lifetime. Since Java is still the main language for the JVM, I am not surprised that Java books are still popular even though the language is getting long in the tooth.

6ren 16y ago
hmm, the VM concept dates back to 1966 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine), though of course the JVM was the first to achieve wide adoption. I hear there've been many advancements in VM technology in the JVM, esp for JIT compilation, and (I don't know but) possibly these could be fundamental. I keep thinking of Alan Kay's claim that nothing significant has been invented in computer science in the last 30 years (since 1980): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]