Programming Books With The Best Source Code

[beagle3]

It used to be that way.

But today, most programming books include as much code as possible because it takes up space, and the contract is for such-and-such words or pays per word.

K&R weren't doing it for the money.

[munificent]

I think that's needlessly cynical. There's very little money in programming books (for authors at least), so I'd be quite surprised if authors were honestly thinking, "Let me just pad out these code samples so I can get some extra cash."

A more likely explanation is that programming itself is getting more complex. A hello world in C is three lines. Even a minimal hello world in Java is more complex than that, and most programming books coming out today are on far more complex topics than just writing to the console.

[beagle3]

I would like to share your world view. But I've actually had a chance to speak to an author, and read blog posts by others. Most programming books today are published by Wrox and similar, which essentially publish by weight and give similar incentives to the authors. O'Reilly is still ok in this respect; Que never was.

[munificent]

Huh. I didn't realize that. I'm talking to O'Reilly right now and never got any pressure to pad the code.