Book Reviews – Again

drsql — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:53:00 GMT

I have gotten a few more reviews in, and interestingly I appreciate the negative ones almost as much as the positive ones. I prefer the negative ones that have decent star ratings better… but what are you going to do.

The most recent review was critical of the book for not having mentioned testing. I actually think that this was really good criticism and have already started my planning for how to rectify this. The only thing I wish this reviewer had done was mention the rest of the book. This person has three reviews on Amazon and some cool stuff on his wish list (if we ever meet, I will be happy to buy you an expresso/cup of coffee and discuss the rest of the book, which pretty much goes for anyone, if you want. I will also buy you lunch at my favorite restaurant: Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Only rule is that we have to talk about the book at least a little).

Please, if you have read the book, oh please (am I begging), I beg you (yes, I am begging) to please email me your feelings on the book or post reviews. I would love to know what you thought of it. I just want to make the book better and who knows, I usually give out a few copies of the next book (no guarantees) if the advice is really constructive.

The real problem here is that writing is a VERY slow process. If my book was electronic, I could start writing and shoehorn in the new material and be done with it. But a book is not like a website. I wrote the book as a cohesive 650+ pages that are supposed to work together as a unit. Unlike a set of web pages, my hope is that you will skim 1/2 of the book and read at least half (which half depends on you, but I like both halves.) And in each edition, I try to give more and more information as I find it, learn it, and on a few shining occasions, make something up.

In the first edition, the process was simply that I wrote what I thought I wanted to say, and editor(s) hacked that to bits. So about 10 people were involved in the creation. Now, working on the fifth edition I have had hundreds of people give me feedback, and a fairly small percentage tell me stuff that was missing that ruined the experience for them. I take these comments VERY seriously, especially if I agree with them. If you compared version one to the fourth version, a lot of the stuff I was really enthused about didn’t make too many people all that excited, so I cut it. In this last version, I have more examples, more code, and more technique, because it was asked for.

Now if I just knew if this reviewer liked anything else about, or if there was more that was disliked I could possibly make the next book even better. So if you have any ideas/feelings/criticism/etc email them to louis@drsql.org. Thanks!

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Book Reviews – Again