Joe Gregorio
You certainly heard when Ruby book sales were growing 1500%, and 700%, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention that it has quietly dropped to 53%. I don't bring this up to poke fun at the Ruby folks, but as supporting evidence for my own thesis that there is no 'next' Java and there is no 'next' framework.
The only thing I would add is that it also hasn't helped that for most of the year there was really only one book dedicated to Rails. With the influx of new books, perhaps 2007 will be a better gauge?
Posted by josh lucas on 2007-01-19
Yeah, that would be a sucky business to be in, when your growth rate is ONLY 53%/year.
I wonder how many people are just not buying books anymore anyway? Count me as one. I resist the urge to get 'technical' books anymore, since I can get everything I need, pretty much, from the web. Even my Ruby book (pick-axe); rarely pick it up, though I do peruse the pdf version from time to time. I long ago stopped depending on python books; the python docs online are quite good, in general.
Maybe that's part of the story as well; of Java / Ruby / Python / JavaScript, JavaScript is the one that has the least useful online web docs. I still pull out the monster Rhino book from time to time ...
Posted by Patrick Mueller on 2007-01-18