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Letters to the Editor + CVu Journal Vol 15, #4 - Aug 2003
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Title: Letters to the Editor

Author: 

Date: 08 August 2003 13:15:59 +01:00 or Fri, 08 August 2003 13:15:59 +01:00

Summary: 

Body: 

Dear ACCU

I thought I would write in and explain why in my opinion Francis' idea for a book of the year award elicited such a small response. This year I have so far read:

Table 1.

<colgroup> <col> <col></colgroup> <thead> </thead> <tbody> </tbody>
Title Publishing date
Mastering Regular Expressions Jan 2002
More Exceptional C++ Jan 2002
Programming with Qt March 2002
2002 was a bad year for reading technical books, I only read:
Exceptional C++ Dec 1999
Learning Python March 1999
2001 was much better but I will not carry on as it is tedious.

I do not consider these lists very long, but in the eight years I have been a professional C/C++ programmer I have always found myself to be an avid reader in comparison with the majority of my peers.

I tend to read books as and when I have the time, or when they are relevant to my current work. Which means (as the above list testifies) the number I read in the year of publication is small - usually only one or at most two. In turn this leads me to believe that I cannot really form an opinion of the best book published in the last year.

If instead it was asked what was the best book on a particular subject (say C++, design, teaching programming, most useful day to day etc.) published in the last five years (the shelf life of the average computing book) I think it would elicit a much greater response. For instance it would allow the C++ category to include such modern classics as the "Effective" and "Exceptional" C++ series.

Thank you for writing. I too have trouble even remembering the year of publication of books I've read, and possibly the requirement of having read enough new books in the last year does rule out many people (though some of us try to keep up with the latest literature as much as we can). It is a sad reflection on the state of the industry that many professional users of C, C++ and similar languages have read fewer than a handful of books in their careers; some good recommendations from mainstream practitioners (excluding for now those who do read many technical books each year) might be more valuable to the majority than recommendations of the latest, greatest books on cool things Andrei can do to bring compilers to tears. (But Andrei, if you're reading: please do continue to torture compilers, eventually the leading edge helps to advance the average level of programming. And it's fun between now and then.) James

Notes: 

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