5 ms·
As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space. I still remember in the early 2000s
by roadside_picnic 10mo ago
As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space. I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine. I could spend hours just exploring what languages and topics there were I didn't even know existed. Powell's Technical Books used to be an entire separate store filled with books on every technical topic imaginable.
The publishing industry veterans I've worked with told me it was even more incredible during the height of the dotcom boom: book sales in the 100,000 copy range was not that rare.
Today I can only think of two truly technical book stores that still exist: The MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge, MA and Ada Books in Seattle, WA. The latter, while a delightful store, has relegated the true technical book section to the backroom, which unfortunately doesn't seem to get refreshed too often (though, part of the beauty of this is it still has many of the weird old technical books that used to be everywhere).
- seg_lol 10mo agoThe UW bookstore in Seattle like many big science schools had a wondrous technical book section. Isles of Springer. The bookstore itself is a shadow of its former shelf.
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- zdragnar 10mo agoMy own college experience heavily soured me on both book stores and especially school run book stores. The markup was obscene and their buy back rates were worse. Half price books and a few other book stores lulled me back a few times, but nonfiction books are kept around mostly as eye candy at this point.
- bsder 10mo agoAll the US universities outsourced their bookstores. Now I can't even walk in and browse what books the various departments are using for classes, anymore. Everything is now behind bars and completely inaccessible.
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- zippyman55 10mo agoYes, I was so disappointed with my visit last year - not yet hopeless, but close to it. Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle is a better place.
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- shawn_w 10mo agoElliot Bay is a shadow of what it used to be when it was in Pioneer Square.
- senderista 10mo agoAda's these days is more about politics than technology.
- zx8080 10mo agoWhat kind of politics? I mean, what do they sell, little to no tech books?
- senderista 10mo agoJust go see for yourself?
- zx8080 10mo agoNot living in the US, so cannot.
- jayde2767 10mo agoWeird, I have honestly never walked into a Barnes and Noble and had satisfaction with any of their technical content on the shelf. That pleasure died when we lost Borders. *Edit: spell correct kills me!
- aksss 10mo agoYeah, peak experience for me was when our town had both a Borders and B&N offering huge tech book sections. Then Borders closed. Then B&N became a toy store.
- NetMageSCW 10mo agoBorders was always the king for books, magazines and DVD media.
- rmason 10mo agoI too am avid reader and was visiting five local bookstores on a weekly basis. Several of them had huge areas stocked with tech books. I had tried Amazon maybe six months after it launched and bought there sporadically. But almost any book i sought was available locally and the savings weren't worth the convenience of purchasing locally. Then in a three month period in late Spring 2000 all the programming books disappeared. Then my choice was between Amazon with quick delivery and the local store with a slower delivery and a higher price. So been buying from Amazon ever since and I can't remember the last time I have visited a bookstore.
- Mistletoe 10mo agoThis makes sense, "enough" of the old technical info is in the AI brains now and easily accessed via a query.
- TheOtherHobbes 10mo agoA lossy compressed version of it, at least. But a lot of is also in blogs and (video) tutorials. As well as Stack Overflow. And all very searchable. The old brick-of-paper approach to tech manuals just isn't a thing any more. I don't particularly miss it. It was, if you think about, usually a slow and inefficient way to present information - often better at presenting what was possible than how to do make it happen.
- lazystar 10mo ago> often better at presenting what was possible than how to do make it happen. that, i feel, is the chilling aspect to this situation. does the lack of new books explaining what's possible, imply that our society's opportunites for growth are dwindling?
- marai2 10mo agoSame with the Stanford university bookstore. Was one of the better bookstores in the Bayarea. Used to have a whole room of technical, science, math books. It too is a shadow of its former self. So sad.
- zippyman55 10mo agoI cry when I visit the Stanford Bookstore. In the 1980's if I needed any technical book, it was there. Now, just stupid clothing.
- rr808 10mo ago> told me it was even more incredible during the height of the dotcom boom I was a developer in the 90s before Netscape even came out. I didn't have a computer at home and dialup barely existed. If you wanted to do computer stuff you had to read. If you wanted to try a library you had to buy a CD from a bookstore or mail in an order which would get posted to you.
- naikrovek 10mo ago> As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space. When I think about this, I get a little bit scared. Imagine books going away, even if it's just the subcategory of technical books. The printed word has been around for a long time. The number of things that have been printed has always gone up. It really bothers me that that's changing. PDFs and websites are no substitute for printed paper bound in a cover. PDFs and websites are a fallback when the preferred media isn't available, they are not supposed to be the preferred media. All of the of the reasons that people have given over the years are applicable when it comes to why paper is superior for this.
- NetMageSCW 10mo agoFor the (very) long term, books may be superior, but for the non-illustrated fiction short term, eBooks and an eReader are vastly better. Reading synced to my phone and tablet, takes up less space than a single paperback, and immediate delivery of the next book.
- calenti 10mo agoAlso, physical books are immutable; electronic content is not. Orwell was not wrong, just premature.
- anyonecancode 10mo ago> I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine. B&N, and Borders, are how I learned to code. Directionless after college, I thought, hey, why not learn how to make websites? And I'd spend a lot of time after work reading books at these stores (and yes, buying too).
- ompogUe 10mo agoUgh, tell me about it. In Canada, Chapters put the knife in the independents. They used to have a great selection. Once there was no competition, they reduced their selection by turning half their floor space into selling pillows and candles.