Tim O'Reilly in a Nutshell | Hacker News Reader

Tim O'Reilly in a Nutshell

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Tim, I imagine you'll get over here eventually, if this thread picks up steam. I've quite enjoyed and found useful many O'Reilly titles, especially the "classics" from the '90's and early on in the prior decade.

However, I've had in-depth experience with several recent O'Reilly titles that are not just somewhat worse, but frankly not at all worth the money. That have left me wondering where the hell the editor, any editor, was; not just to tidy up the language a bit, but to assess the competence of the author and the worthiness -- and correctness -- of the title's content.

My impression is that you've shifted your own attention more to the conferences and some of the forward-thinking activity going on in the Valley and beyond (e.g. "alternative" energy development). While I don't begrudge you that, part of me hopes you might cast a rather attentive, and sustained, eye upon the current state of O'Reilly's publishing activities and titles. If they aren't improved (perhaps the "Head Start" series being an exception; but that's a genre, not a publishing house), I fear for O'Reilly's future as your pre-existing momentum runs out. My selfish interest being that I could use, and would readily pay for -- as I have often in the past -- higher quality titles akin to those of yore.

Maybe my anecdotal experience is the exception, but I've been reading here and there comments from others to at least somewhat similar effect.

I'd also note that while I love the expansion of O'Reilly's line over the past few years to more nonstandard topics (books like programming collective intelligence, or mining the social web), I've noticed that the quality of the technical editing has really declined.

I probably buy 5-10 a O'Reilly books per year, and I can't remember the last time I got one without significant typos or code errors that would be deal-breakers to a less experienced programmer.

two examples: the art of seo and couchDB were both books way below -what i believe is - the o'reilly standard. the editors were either completely overwhelmed with the topics at hand, or the books wre rushed out the door due to "we need something on the market now" reasons.

In fact some books are good(+) and others are terrible(-). I recently have read a few O'Reilly books on iPhone programming.

+ Head First iPhone Development: The authors' penetrating and clear explanation is the reason why we pay for a book where there are very good and free documents. Fairly good book and I have recommended this book to all of my friends.

- Learning iPhone Programming: Terrible. The author is fairly incompetent. He should have read Head First iPhone Development not to mention Apple's document in the first place.

- iOS 4 Programming Cookbook: The most terrible book that I have ever read. The author is not even accustomed to C besides Objective-C. Who says procedure in C? Some explanation is completely wrong. Vandad also deleted the readers' errata. I have seen many erratas submitted and removed silently. Even if the errata was wrong this should never ever happen because other readers can also misunderstand that point.

If O'Reilly have ever have a decent technical reviewers in mobile programming, they should have these books reviewed by them before these books published to the world.

Finally O'Reilly should know that nowadays nobody refers to reviews in the oreilly.com. Many of the reviews are fake and blindly friendly.

I hope to see much better ("worth the money") books from O'Reilly in the future.

Regarding reviews on oreilly.com, I can assure you that isn't true. While all product review systems are open to manipulation (Amazon has been dealing with this from the beginning.) we're careful to verify reviewers. All reviews, good or bad, are welcome, and you'll find plenty that are painful for us and our authors, such as this one: http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010067/

I don't think many of reviewers know even how to compile the source codes not to mention how to program it. The authors seem to mob their friends or families to post favourite reviews that are just superficial. ----------------

Especially Brian Jepson and the mobile series are the most problematic. I think he should have chosen qualified authors in the first place.

Me and my friends are not evening considering the forthcoming books even with intriguing titles in the O'Reilly mobile series( ... Augmented Reality ..., etc. with animals or birds on their cover). Those are DOA by the wrong authors.

You (or the authors) can cheat readers once, however those readers never return. I think the TRENDS of the sales figures have already told this fact. READERS NEVER RETURN.

Your claim that the reviews are fake is untrue. These are genuine reviews. But if you don't believe me, I can't change that. I can change what ends up on the printed page, though. We want these books to be the best they can be, and if you want to help, here's how:

Submit errata for the book when you find a mistake: For Learning iPhone Programming, it's http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/create/errata/?b=5073. For the Cookbook, it's http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/create/errata/?b=15595. We don't pay people for errata, but I'll make an offer to you and anyone else reading this: for every 10 new errata submissions of yours that we can confirm, I'll give you an O'Reilly ebook of your choice free.

Be a tech reviewer on an upcoming book: We do pay a modest honorarium for this. You'd be reading the book, looking for mistakes and other issues. Contact me for details.

To take me up on either offer, drop me an email at bjepson at oreilly. Act now, and I'll hook you up with an early access ebook for an upcoming book that I'm working on, Programming iOS 4: http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010258. I'd be interested in your opinion of that book.

Thanks,

Brian

Hi Brian,

Thanks for great offer. It is a great honour to be a tech reviewer for O'Reilly. However, for some personal reason I can't accept your great offer. I believe you can find better tech reviewers than me.

For erratas, - Learning iPhone Programming: It's almost been a year. I forgot the details. - iOS 4 Progg Cookbook: Vandad doesn't deserve any errata submission from readers. But I think anyone who have read some of Apple's document could easily find errors in the book. You said that book is for medium to advanced developers. I am just curious about how you measure the level of developers. He just made the clear cut documents hard to understand and even wrong sometimes. (Who says PROCEDURE in C world? Who on earth add frameworks to target not project? is application:didReceiveLocalNotification: method called when in background? Have you ever open anyone of the sample code projects in recent Xcode?)

Thanks,

Thanks, bk21. We did have compensated technical reviewers, who are themselves iPhone app developers, review Vandad's book, and Vandad addressed all the concerns he raised. We calibrate the target audience level based on the topics that are covered (beginner, intermediate, advanced).

I'll review these concerns with Vandad and also ask him to tackle the problems with the project files and get these addressed quickly.

Thanks,

Brian

Do you think anyone in the review http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010180#reviews downloaded the sample code and compiled any one of the projects with Xcode 4 or 3.2 with iOS SDK 4.x? I am wondering how someone who does not even try to compile the sample codes posts their review to a programming book? I don't think they even understand Objective-C.

The configuration of all the projects are mess, so you have to reconfigure all the projects to compile. I hope this problem to be fixed ASAP.

Thanks,

I can't tell you whether the reviewers downloaded the sample code, but I don't expect they would have posted a review without trying at least some of the examples.

I will ask the author to review his examples ASAP and make any fixes necessary. Do you remember which settings you needed to change in the projects?

Thanks,

Brian

If he uses latest Xcode and KNOWS how to use Xcode 3.2 or Xcode 4, he will find it. (Remove the frameworks with the wrong path. Add the necessary frameworks to Project. Set the base configuration to latest iOS. Change the settings for device/simulator and debug/release correctly if needed. I had to change the configurations of all the projects. It's pretty annoying, because there are more than a hundred projects.)

Isn't it funny no one told this problem yet?

Thanks. I just tried a few at random (Adding Persons to Groups, Displaying Hierarchical Data, and Displaying an Image for the Title of the Navigation Bar). Xcode complained about "Missing SDK in target" because I only have SDK 4.3, but they all built fine nonetheless. I didn't find any that had a problem finding a framework.

I'm assuming you installed Xcode into the standard location, /Developer, right? Let me know the name of at least one project that's messed up so I can duplicate your problem on my computer.

Thanks,

Brian

I installed Xcode 3.2.6 in default directory(/Developer). I downloaded example code http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920010180/ Download the example code again to start from the scrach. For just one example, check "Allocating and Initializing Objects" in Chapter 1. You said you build successfully with the base SDK missing? If you look at the frameworks on the left side 'Groups and Files' pane of Xcode, in which color do the frameworks look? Red? Black? You can't build successfully if they look red.

Right click on any of the frameworks in the Groups and Files pane of Xcode and choose 'Get Info'. Could you please tell me the full path?

How about Xcode 4? You mentioned both Xcode 4 and 3.2, and I'm using Xcode 4.

In Xcode 4, I downloaded it from scratch, extracted the file, saw the "missing base SDK" error, but ran it successfully in the simulator without any changes.

If you'd like, I might be able to do a clean install of the old version on a different machine in /Developer and tell you what I see. But I won't have a chance to do that for a few days.

If I recall correctly, this is a common problem with Xcode 3.x. Even sample code that people obtained from Apple employees seemed to have this problem:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3365114/frameworks-are-re...

I'm pretty sure I had this problem a lot before I upgraded to Xcode 4.

- Brian

I am using Xcode 3.2.6 on MacBook, Xcode 4.0.2 on iMac. After I came back home, I checked it. As you said it build successfully. I think Xcode 4.0.2 is smarter than 3.2.6 and automatically correcting the configuration.

You uploaded the new updated sample code just a few hours ago. Thanks for quick response.

You're welcome; I had asked Vandad to check over the code, and he got back to me with a new set of examples very fast. He also confirmed what you found; Xcode 4 is really good at figuring out what it should do. I'm really glad about that because I've had a lot of trouble opening other peoples' projects and even opening old projects of my own in Xcode 3.x.

Thanks, pasbesoin, for the frank feedback. You're right that I haven't been much involved in the book program for years. But even if I were, my own technical skills are now rusty enough that I'm not sure my involvement would help. It's ironic, perhaps, that we are now relying more on outside technical reviewers than on the expertise of our editors. And perhaps that is the problem. Our editors definitely used to be the beta users of the book.

The folks who do manage the program now will definitely be taking this thread seriously, though.

Specific criticisms are always helpful, btw.

Hello. There are O'Reilly people listening here. Can you be specific about titles and the problems with them? The Art of SEO and couchDB are two mentioned. What else?

Thanks.

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