> then I think everyone is seriously under evaluating the power of online publishing
Well actually I believe it is not so much "online publishing" than "free publishing" that is under evaluated, especially concerning programming books.
The thing is that when you want to teach yourself a programming language, there is a ton of free material online, so you don't want to go buy a hardcopy of a book (except some really exceptional material sucha as sicp, and others). It is especially true if it is not your first programming language, so you don't need all the "algorithm" stuff, and are just looking for a quick reference, some idioms, and a lot of code examples.
The only issue with the stuff you find online is that there seldom is a unique comprehensive source of information. You often have to jump between different tutorials in order to grasp certain concepts (can't help to mention the concept of monads in Haskell, which is a perfect illustration of what I'm saying).
So I'm not surprised that a tutorial covering many topics got so many hits..
> .. or charge about $1
Doesn't sound like a good idea. The problem is not with the price, but with the effort required to pay. I don't have a paypal account, and I don't plan to get one just to buy a tutorial, when I have tons of other ressources online. This is very different from the "apple apps" that cost one dollar: the cost is the same, but the effort required is much smaller.
The trouble with online tutorials is that they lack the cohesiveness of books. Usually they focus on how-to-do one single aspect and you lose the overall view of the subject as a whole.
Well actually I believe it is not so much "online publishing" than "free publishing" that is under evaluated, especially concerning programming books.
The thing is that when you want to teach yourself a programming language, there is a ton of free material online, so you don't want to go buy a hardcopy of a book (except some really exceptional material sucha as sicp, and others). It is especially true if it is not your first programming language, so you don't need all the "algorithm" stuff, and are just looking for a quick reference, some idioms, and a lot of code examples.
The only issue with the stuff you find online is that there seldom is a unique comprehensive source of information. You often have to jump between different tutorials in order to grasp certain concepts (can't help to mention the concept of monads in Haskell, which is a perfect illustration of what I'm saying).
So I'm not surprised that a tutorial covering many topics got so many hits..
> .. or charge about $1
Doesn't sound like a good idea. The problem is not with the price, but with the effort required to pay. I don't have a paypal account, and I don't plan to get one just to buy a tutorial, when I have tons of other ressources online. This is very different from the "apple apps" that cost one dollar: the cost is the same, but the effort required is much smaller.