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Revive magazines! Especially for programming stuff...
I was sitting there coding away on a Ruby on Rails app at work and I don't remember what it was but something got me thinking how cool it would be if there were a monthly Ruby on Rails magazine that more or less consolidated all of the updates in the Rails community within the last month and included tutorials and such.
I figured such a thing would be very useful. And then I got to thinking how many programmer/design things in general would be served well to have a magazine or to start printing stuff in a magazine format.
This is what I mean: I love magazines. I always have. You pick one up and they are just the right size and are colorful and you can fold them up and not worry about them too much. Plus they are cheap.
Books on the other hand - especially programming books, are generally boring, thick, and you want to take really good care of them. My latest programming book Learning Python from O'Reilly cost me damn $40, is 500-pages and I feel like I *need* to take care of it (I'm like that with all books).
What I'd love to see is something like Learning Python printed in a magazine format. I don't mean that it would be monthly, what I mean is instead of using that odd shape on thick paper and a nice binding, it would be refitted to magazine size, be done in color, and due to its larger size, could probably fit at around 300 pages or so.
Just as a check I was looking at some magazines at the store today. For $6 you can get a 200-page magazine that is about half-an-inch thick. My Python book, by comparison, is probably about 1 1/2 inches thick and again, it cost me $40.
And if you could go to the store (or order them online) a book in magazine format for $10, you wouldn't worry so much about whether it got dog-eared and what not, because that's kind of what you expect to happen to magazines and for some reason they take the beating really well. And hey, if you really want a copy that's in pristine condition, its only $10, not $25 or $40, so its not that big a deal to buy a new one.
I won't even bother carrying some of my nicer books in my backpack because I know they'll get jacked up (it happened to my Rails book, but I had to do it because I needed it to work).
I guess while magazines in general seem to be declining in popularity due to the Internet and the fact that those monthly updates aren't so useful when you can get them the minute they happen, some things, such as programming books, stay constant for long periods of time (5 years or more), and thus it would be awesome to see them in something a bit more friendly.
What do you think of this? Do you know anywhere you can go to get magazines published?
I figured such a thing would be very useful. And then I got to thinking how many programmer/design things in general would be served well to have a magazine or to start printing stuff in a magazine format.
This is what I mean: I love magazines. I always have. You pick one up and they are just the right size and are colorful and you can fold them up and not worry about them too much. Plus they are cheap.
Books on the other hand - especially programming books, are generally boring, thick, and you want to take really good care of them. My latest programming book Learning Python from O'Reilly cost me damn $40, is 500-pages and I feel like I *need* to take care of it (I'm like that with all books).
What I'd love to see is something like Learning Python printed in a magazine format. I don't mean that it would be monthly, what I mean is instead of using that odd shape on thick paper and a nice binding, it would be refitted to magazine size, be done in color, and due to its larger size, could probably fit at around 300 pages or so.
Just as a check I was looking at some magazines at the store today. For $6 you can get a 200-page magazine that is about half-an-inch thick. My Python book, by comparison, is probably about 1 1/2 inches thick and again, it cost me $40.
And if you could go to the store (or order them online) a book in magazine format for $10, you wouldn't worry so much about whether it got dog-eared and what not, because that's kind of what you expect to happen to magazines and for some reason they take the beating really well. And hey, if you really want a copy that's in pristine condition, its only $10, not $25 or $40, so its not that big a deal to buy a new one.
I won't even bother carrying some of my nicer books in my backpack because I know they'll get jacked up (it happened to my Rails book, but I had to do it because I needed it to work).
I guess while magazines in general seem to be declining in popularity due to the Internet and the fact that those monthly updates aren't so useful when you can get them the minute they happen, some things, such as programming books, stay constant for long periods of time (5 years or more), and thus it would be awesome to see them in something a bit more friendly.
What do you think of this? Do you know anywhere you can go to get magazines published?
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Comments
I don't. My exact statement was:
"such as programming books, stay constant for long periods of time (5 years or more)"
And its true...may don't see revisions except when languages change version, and even then the changes are usually minimal.
It still would be a nice alternative to the current "textbook" nature of programming books.