Books in the store in the USA - still a portent of the UK market to come?

This is now an archive web site.
Some is still relevant as at February 2026 but some is purely of historic interest.

Lisa and I (Graham) are now fully retired from IT training.We have made many friends over 30 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Apache, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are out of date, but with upward compatability some examples remain operational and relevant. You are welcome to make use of them "as seen", at your own risk. We now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We remain active, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to do things!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))

Books in the store in the USA - still a portent of the UK market to come? (written 2010-05-08)

In the quite-distant past, I've written about how we look at bookshops while we're in the USA, see which technical books they have on their shelves, and use it as one input - one guiding light - in reading where the UK may be headed in six months to a year. [article]. With technical books now being very much an online purchase, the pointers may not be so good ... but I took the opportunity to go into Borders in Pentagon City, have a browse in the old fashioned way, and see what they had on the programming languages we teach:

PHP (lots)
Java (lots)
C++ (lots)
Python (lots)
Ruby (lots)
Perl (2)
Tcl (1)
Lua (none that I saw)

MySQL and Linux are very popular. I was on the lookout for Scala (3 books), SQLite (none) and Go (none). Didn't spot any of the Tomcat books (but then I wasn't particularly looking). Others of note - Ajax, Restful, lot of iphone app development books.

My guess is they stock what they sell, and my guess is that in an office and US government area they sell to the various office workers and government departments. Perhaps I can even conclude which languages people are learning for their work.

It's a bit of a shock just how low Perl is - but (I'm afraid) only a bit of a shock. It's faded somewhat, and to some extent the lack of books indicates a lack of newcomers to the languages, rather than any lack of use by the older hands. Book stocks and sales will give no pointers to that.

I bought ... a handful of books. Just two of them on programming - one Python, and one iPhone. And books on data, general programming and implementation of social networks, and search engine optimization. Two particular books I was looking for were nowhere to be seen; me thinks that's an excuse to pop up to London some Saturday and go round Foyles ;-)

(written 2010-05-08, updated 2010-05-09)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

G908 - Well House Consultants - Language Comparisons
  [209] FAQ - Perl or PHP - (2005-02-11)
  [1582] Ruby, C, Java and more - getting out of loops - (2008-03-19)
  [1717] Q - Should I use Perl or Python? - (2008-07-23)
  [1990] Speaking all the languages - (2009-01-12)
  [2700] The same very simple program in many different programming languages - (2010-03-31)
  [2866] Ruby - how does it compare and where is it the right language? - (2010-07-11)
  [2947] Teaching Lua to a Perl advocate - (2010-09-06)
  [3003] What will we be teaching in six years? - (2010-10-17)
  [3112] Public and private courses - subjects available for 2011 - (2010-12-29)
  [3169] Rekeying a table - comparison in #Ruby #Perl and #Python - (2011-02-14)
  [3785] Programming languages - what are the differences between them? - (2012-06-27)

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Some other Articles

Touching base
But what will you DO with all those pictures?
Bodicea, Lincoln, and our new MP
Same subject - different pictures
Books in the store in the USA - still a portent of the UK market to come?
At Arlington and the Pentagon
You do not just fly - that is just part of the journey
Voting day - UK General Election
Going off at a tangent, for a ramble
Views of Wessex

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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. So much so, and it's so long ago that we are retired

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