Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- Subject: Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- From: "Ujwal S. Sathyam" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:08:22 -0800
All very understandable reasons. Our loss :-(
I bought the Cocoa Programming, Cocoa Programming for MacOS X by Hillegass, and the MacOS X Developer's Guide by Feiler books, and they were instrumental in giving me a very quick start into Cocoa Programming. Granted, Cocoa is much easier to learn than most other frameworks, and I have tried quite a few, but the books were an invaluable reference.
It is regrettable that we may not see another edition. I would like to take the opportunity to commend you three on the excellent work.
I for one would not mind contributing to a community fund to see an updated version in the future.
Ujwal
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.)
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