use Perl

• Writerly Advice (Score:2)

  by Odud (1047)

  If only more people followed your advice... Looking at the computer bookshelf you see the page count increasing as the subject matter becomes more specialised. Do you think that authors cover everything in detail because that takes less skill than determining what to include/exclude? Do book buyers relate page count to value?
  • Re:Writerly Advice (Score:2)

    by ziggy (25)

    Looking at the computer bookshelf you see the page count increasing as the subject matter becomes more specialised.

    There's a self-perpetuating meme at work there. Because other books are thick and narrowly focused, new titles need to be thick and narrowly focused as well.

    I was approached by a respectable publisher last year (who shall remain Not O'Reilly (tm)) to write a book on some reasonably new and fashionable topic. In the preliminary discussions, the editor talked about writing a book that wo
    • Re:Writerly Advice (Score:2)

      by TorgoX (1933)

      Tech publishing, and publishing in general, is only as good as it has to be, and often worse. [greenspun.com]
    • Re:Writerly Advice (Score:1)

      by koschei (147)

      Darn TCP/IP book I had to buy (textbook). Fattest book I own, thick pages, massive font, awful index, and I'd be surprised if, were it retypeset like an ORA, it were larger than the Perl DBI book. It's worrying, quite worrying.

      --
        ---ict / Spoon
  • Re:Writerly Advice (Score:2)

    by TorgoX (1933)

    I think the specialization is another question altogether, distinct from the topic of having examples that cater to all kinds of readers.

    I think the specialization is an attempt to get at subaudiences, and it's not inherently bad (if we mean the same thing by "specialization").