State of Python

[Martin Maney]

Steven Rumbalski <srumbalski at prodigy.net> wrote:
> In all this I never thought to ask Border's staff for help.  I figure they 
> keep all there stock on the shelves except for the stuff that needs to be 
> replenished frequently.  I finally went out on a limb and went to the 
> reptiles section.  
> 
> It wasn't there.  

<sigh>  I have really really fond memories of Borders from, uhm, I
guess it's over a decade ago, now.  I was first introduced to Borders
at the original storefront in Ann Arbor; a little later they opened
what I assume were some of the first expansion locations.  For several
years I was a regular customer of one in the Detroit suburbs (now I'm
not sure I even recall where it was - Southfield?)

Anyway, ont he quality of implementation back then.  Maybe it was just
luck, but the staff were almost too good to believe.  Like the time I
was looking to pickup a coipy of _Smalltalk-80: the language and its
implementation_, which I knew they had had a copy of.  The day I went
in planning to part with money, I couldn't find it.  Not thinking to
look in the reptiles section <grin>, I instead asked the nearby
clerk... who knew the book, knew they used to have a copy, and who,
when he'd verified that they no longer had one, pushed the button to
reorder it.  Not because I'd promised to buy it, but because I might
like to be bale to sit down and look it over next time I was in.

Oh yeah.  Border's used to have comfy chairs - lots of comfy chairs. 
After all, shouldn't you be able to look over a book before deciding
whether to buy it?  That store in Southfield (?) had decided that the
chairs they originally got weren't comfy enough, so after about six
months they replaced them all.  Ah, those were the days.

Oh, yes, the Smalltalk book.  Yes, of course they did have it on hand
the next time I was in Detroit (well, we rarely went into the city
itself, except for the occasional Breakfast with Bach at the art
museum, but you knew what I meant, didn't you?), and in fact I bought
it and have it here now.

> I then went to Barnes & Noble, where I found it immediately and purchased 
> it.

The nearest B&N seems to have reduced the shelf space they give
computer books in the last year or so, but not by as much as the
Borders that's in the next mall over.  At this point the biggest
selection of in-stock computer titles I know of is at Micro Center in
...Westmont, I think that must be.

Gah, I still miss Books'n'Bytes (a very local bookstore that was
apparently made possible by one or more firms that did IT training and
moved enough books through B'n'B to make their tremendous breadth of
coverage sustainable... until it dried up).