Great New Book

[Greg Jorgensen]

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:92ig6k02apk at news2.newsguy.com...

> 63.5 mm for 760 pages works out at over 83 microns per page.

I saw the Chun book at Powell's and at first glance it doesn't seem to add
anything to the online documentation and the Beazley reference book. I
didn't need to learn about loops and variables (or objects and references)
when I learned Python, though, so your mileage may vary.

I don't know about books published in Italy, but here in America books in
general, and technical books especially, are sold by weight rather than
quality of the content. For years now Que, SAMS, Sybex, et al. have
simultaneously made their books thicker and heavier while reducing the
useful content. Remove the hundreds of pages of useless printed code, the
30-page tables of contents, and the lame humor that pollutes $50 technical
books, you are left with very little useful content, usually re-hashed
straight from the official documentation. Somehow Kernighan & Ritchie taught
C to hundreds of thousands of programmers in fewer than 300 pages (just
under an inch on thin but highliter-safe paper, and still in great shape
after more than ten years of regular use), but SAMS' authors need 700+ pages
and almost 6 inches to teach HTML or Dreamweaver.

The thick heavy technical books I have bought have invariably fallen apart
after a short time. I have a well-used edition of Poe, almost 100 years old,
printed on Nelson's India Paper, and it is has held up very well.

--
Greg Jorgensen
Deschooling Society
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pobox.com