Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- Subject: Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- From: Don Yacktman <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:38:20 -0700
On Jan 24, 2004, at 1:41 AM, Michael Monscheuer wrote:
>Well, it'd be a conflict for me to work on an update (being an Apple
>employee paid to write Cocoa Documentation and all).
I think, Apple should be highly interested in an updated edition of
"Cocoa Programming", too.
After all it is - as a supplement to Aarons book - the best way to get
an overview of all the main COCOA features, the concepts and how they
depend on each other. This is needed to get started easily and
efficiently, which is important for developer motivation - and finally
also a question of money.
Having more developers out there means more sexy programs means more
customers means more success for Apple's shareholders ;-)
Sure, there are plenty of reasons why an update would be a good thing.
I'd love to see Cocoa Programming updated. If it were possible, I'd
like to participate. However, several factors make it near impossible
(or at least very difficult) for me to be a part of any such project
right now.
I think you all *three* should really try to make a new edition
possible.
Let me give you a few of the realities behind publishing so you can
understand why this might not happen on the schedule we'd all like to
see...
I think to some degree it's up to Sams. I'm not sure Sams is
interested or willing to print an update. What I can say for sure is
that Sams hasn't come to me *recently* asking for an update. That
could change at any time, though, I suppose. They don't seem to have
written off the Mac Programming market altogether yet at least. Still,
I can't say that sales for the book have been exactly stellar, so it
isn't like they have a lot of motivation to incur the costs of
producing a second edition. (I think the penetration into the market
is probably decent enough -- it's just that the market is "Cocoa
Programmers", which is a subset of "Mac Programmer", which is a VERY
small subset of "Programmer". The size of the market means that you
just aren't going to sell a zillion copies. Can't happen.)
Let's put it this way: none of the three authors ever has or ever will
receive a royalty check beyond the advance we received for delivering
the manuscript. If you take the number of books that have sold so far
and multiply it by two, that's about how many MORE books would need to
be sold before any of the three of us would ever see another check from
Sams for the Cocoa Programming book. That's very unlikely to ever
happen. At the current rate of sales, I'd die of old age first.
The advance payment worked out to about $2/hour (at the most) for the
time put in to create the book, and it took a LOT of hours from the
three of us. Several man-years were required to create that book. I
put in more than a year on it myself. Now, I didn't do the project to
make money (more like I wanted to give something valuable to the
community that I felt was sorely needed) so I'm not disappointed about
the financial aspects of the project at all. I never expected to make
money off it. I accomplished what I set out to do, and I think at
least a few people have found the book useful. That makes it worth it.
And at the time I did it, I was in a position where I could in effect
afford to make a huge time donation to "the Cocoa cause", even if doing
so did effectively put the MiscKit into a deep slumber (which I still
hope to end soon).
However, even though I started by saying that it's largely up to Sams,
even if they wanted to do an update I probably wouldn't be involved.
So blame me as much or more for that, I guess. Let me explain why I
probably wouldn't be able to participate in an update. It would take
substantial time to get a second edition together -- it's a very big
book. Since my wife has a baby on the way, and I'm still trying to
play catch up financially for all that lost time (and pay) from the
first time around, I'm no longer in a position where I can just take
six months off work and drop to near zero income for another big
community service project. Much as I'd like to update the book, it
just isn't financially feasible for me. Sometimes the realities of
life get in the way.
That's too bad I guess. Shift into pie in the sky dream mode...
If I could afford to take the time off, I'd update Cocoa Programming
and actually write a follow up book that covered _advanced_ Cocoa
techniques. The book we published is only about 2/3 of what was in the
original outline. We literally ran out of space. We went all the way
up to the binder's limit! And with all the new stuff from Apple, I'm
pretty sure I could at least double that trimmed material. There's
enough material left that could be covered that I believe another book
the size of Cocoa Programming could be created. However, at the
moment, I think bringing back the MiscKit would be more valuable to the
community than another book, so what little free time I have right now
is going toward that goal. So I won't be back to writing for a while,
I think. There's only so many hours in a day.
Unless someone comes along and wants to pay me to just do MiscKit and
writing full time, of course. (I'd probably seriously consider such an
offer, though the chances of such a thing ever happening are negligibly
small. I mean, who in their right mind would pay me to write a book or
write software that's just going to be released for free?) While I see
lots of people that would like me to just stop working for several
months to make a new version of the book, I know of nobody willing to
pay me to do it, nor do I believe anyone _should_ want to do that.
Sadly, I can't afford foot those costs again right now. The last one
bled me dry.
Maybe someday the stars will line up so as to make such a project
possible. A follow-up advanced Cocoa book would be really nice to do
someday. Or maybe someone else will come along who is in a position
where they can donate the time to do it and do a good job. Doesn't
have to be me! Right now, it just isn't realistic for me, since I've
got to support my family, they need to eat, and food costs money...
Hopefully that gives a little insight into why you might not see a new
edition in the near future (or an advanced book, or why the MiscKit's
reawakening is taking a while to happen). I won't rule any of this out
completely, but right now it doesn't seem like any of it will happen
for a while. In the meantime, Cocoa Programming is still (IMHO) a good
book. Nearly all the stuff that it contains still very much applies.
As Scott said, the biggest change we'd have to make is retooling the
chapter on Project Builder to discuss XCode (screenshots take a lot of
work to set up, and that chapter is almost all screens). The other
thing I'd want to change is to add a chapter on the controller layer.
To do that, though, we'd have to trim material from other areas of the
book, since it literally can't be any bigger. Cutting out yet more
material would be tough to do. (So I guess the thing to say here is
that if a second edition ever does happen, don't throw away your first
editions since some material will probably have to be removed to make
room for important new material that really would need to be in there.)
--
Later,
Don Yacktman
email@hidden
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