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>Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays? Because books can explain concepts better than any other medium. Books a

>Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays? Because books can explain concepts better than any other medium. Books aren't great for reference/howto because that info goes out of date quickly. E.g. I'm not going to buy a book about browser APIs, I'll use MDN. But I will buy a book about SPA design or HCI. I'll certainly buy a book about a topic like performance analysis or comparing different approaches to ORMs or practical cryptography. The specific libraries will go out of date quickly, but the concepts will be useful for a very long time (and even the specifics will be at least somewhat correct for longer than you'd expect). Like everyone else, technical people have had their attention span removed, segmented, and captured by capital such that "sitting down and reading a book (about a technical subject)" is met with horror. There is hope: the brain is quite plastic and even if you've let yours soak in the sensation stew of your phone 8 hours a day for years now, you can regain this important function soon enough. A well-written tech book is such a pleasure! A long narrative, coherent and filled with nuance...it's an important style of communication and I don't think we want to lose it.

dageshi 3y ago
I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. The people most interested in computer related technical books are those who most heavily use the internet and therefore are most likely to be the ones who buy via amazon or directly from the author. That's before we consider that such technical books are going to be a niche within a niche, in other words, not something to put in a mainstream book store. Historically you might have even needed to find out specialist bookstores for such books or had them ordered specially via the bookstore.
- simpaticoder 3y ago
  >I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. Oh, sorry. It's because book stores want to carry books that are relevant. There is a catch-22 in what you say, because you're right that we've gotten used to buying books online (alibris, not amazon please) which makes bookstores carry them less, which makes us less likely to buy them in bookstores... The spiral downward is real; the opposite, a spiral upward, can also be real with a little effort. Bookstores are filled with books about niche interests, why not ours?

dageshi 3y ago

I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. The people most interested in computer related technical books are those who most heavily use the internet and therefore are most likely to be the ones who buy via amazon or directly from the author. That's before we consider that such technical books are going to be a niche within a niche, in other words, not something to put in a mainstream book store. Historically you might have even needed to find out specialist bookstores for such books or had them ordered specially via the bookstore.

simpaticoder 3y ago
>I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. Oh, sorry. It's because book stores want to carry books that are relevant. There is a catch-22 in what you say, because you're right that we've gotten used to buying books online (alibris, not amazon please) which makes bookstores carry them less, which makes us less likely to buy them in bookstores... The spiral downward is real; the opposite, a spiral upward, can also be real with a little effort. Bookstores are filled with books about niche interests, why not ours?