So not too long ago I was browsing a bookstore and flipping through the computer books section. Of course it had a varied selection of O'Reilly books - the ones with the woodcut animal drawings on the covers. These are classics for computer nerds - you can expect a certain level of quality from such a book. And then I noticed with a fair amount of disgust a new line called "Head First" books that are some sort of stylistic cross between the "Dummies" design and some marketing droid's impression of what slacker Starbucks consumers look like. And I was even sadder to realize that these are also O'Reilly books. Yuck, yuck and double-yuck.
I can only assume that somebody decided the animals weren't going to appeal to a new generation of script kiddies wending their way through what passes for college these days. (Java as a primary instructional language? Pfeaugh! In my day you grokked pointers or you washed out. And probably ended up in marketing creating book covers to annoy me.)
Keep your fresh trendy faces off my reference books. And stay off my lawn!
technorati tags:books, OReilly, HeadFirst
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