I think this is more of a function of what some people have called
‘version fatigue’
When Rails changes drastically and quickly, its a good and bad thing.
Likewise with the documentation. Its the same thing that makes people
say “I’m not going to buy a new computer because it will be obsolete
in 2 months”
I don’t see this as much of a problem, but if the next version comes
out just as quickly, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if even more
people are annoyed. Some people, like myself, are still learning this
stuff, and personally I’m a bit frustrated that I need to get a new
book (or PDF) to stay on top of the latest stuff.
I haven’t been complaining and asking for a discount, but it would be
nice (although impossible to track my purchase). Still, I’m glad to
see that the development community is so active that the
documentation is being made so quickly.
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 10:07:18AM -0400, Jim G. wrote:
I don’t see this as much of a problem, but if the next version comes
out just as quickly, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if even more
people are annoyed. Some people, like myself, are still learning this
stuff, and personally I’m a bit frustrated that I need to get a new
book (or PDF) to stay on top of the latest stuff.
I’m a bit torn on this issue myself. I bought the paper version of the
first edition and will most likely buy a paper version of the second
edition, weather offered a discount or not. In real life I’m a
mainframe
operator. The web development work I do is as a hobby. My hobby budget
is
extremely limited. I would love to buy the bundle and get the new PDF
now
and the paper version later, but that would further stretch my
practically
non-existant budget. If I have to choose between PDF and paper I’ll
take
paper every time. I like real books. The few PDF only books I’ve
bought in
the past I ended up printing out and sticking in a binder, which
increases
my overall cost of PDF books. I have to wonder how many versions of
Rails
are going to come out between now and the time the new paper edition of
the
book comes out. If the second edition is obsolete before it hits the
bookshelves I might not buy it after all.
Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX
If Rails hasn’t made you $23.50 in the last 6 months since the first
edition came out, don’t bother buying the second edition.
Sincerely,
PJ Hyett
http://pjhyett.com
I’ll definitely pick up a new copy. Especially since I haven’t seen
my Agile book since I loaned it out 
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On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:33, Mark Reginald J. wrote:
First of all, I will be buying AWDWR2 very soon (PDF). I also purchased
AWDWR,
just as it was released.
I think all this discussion is due to a slightly bad strategy by the
PragProgs. Should they have provided a mere 10% discount on the PDF for
owners of the first edition (either paper or PDF), everybody would be
happy
and every 1st-ed purchaser would be purchasing the 2nd-ed. By not
providing
this tiny discount, there are some discontent people who would be buying
whatever book on Rails except AWDWR2.
There was somebody asking why would someone buy the book at Amazon
rather than
at pragmaticprogrammers.com. Well, the answer is easy: Amazon discounts
heavily on the book and shipping rates are lower. It’s way more
cost-efficient to buy the paper book at Amazon, then buy the PDF at the
(60%)
discounted rate for paper-owners (it’s even cheaper than buying only the
paper book at pragmaticprogrammers.com). If I were the PragProgs, I
would
only sell the PDF at a discounted rate to those people who bought the
dead-tree book at pragmaticprogrammers.com. Of course, buying the combo
through pragmaticprogrammers.com has the advange of having the beta PDF
since
day one.
Ergo, I should not expect to get a discount when a new edition of a
I found the First Edition great value for money. It saved me a great
deal of time by bootstrapping my Ruby and Rails knowledge, and has
been a very useful reference to the framework. However I would only
buy the full-priced PDF of the Second Edition in recognition of
this value I received from the First Edition. I could not justify
it in relative terms for the new content, particularly now that I
can learn from rawer sources.
But you’re right – $23 is not much in absolute terms. The update would
only have to save you a small amount of time before it payed for itself.
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to the amount of work, I usually need 10 days to answer)
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I would gladly subscribe to this book for annual updates!!!
One thing I’d love to see, though, is the color bars removed from the
top/bottom of the PDF. It’s a massive waste of ink when printing them
out, and I notice they’re not in the printed version. Any chance of
removing those from your PDFs?
On May 3, 2006, at 12:45 PM, PJ Hyett wrote:
If Rails hasn’t made you $23.50 in the last 6 months since the first
edition came out, don’t bother buying the second edition.
Sincerely,
PJ Hyett
http://pjhyett.com
This is the best response yet, I love it.
-Scott
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 09:45:09AM -0700, PJ Hyett wrote:
} If Rails hasn’t made you $23.50 in the last 6 months since the first
} edition came out, don’t bother buying the second edition.
Hm. Rails got me a new, higher paying job. I guess I should buy the new
version. That’s pretty convincing.
} Sincerely,
} PJ Hyett
–Greg
On May 3, 2006, at 4:08 PM, Ajai Khattri wrote:
If I buy a car in 2006, I do not get a discount when the 2007
Not all of these are good analogies.
Who cares? Analogies are approximations, and each of the ones I gave
are approximately accurate.
If I bought a Mac Mini a month before the new Mac Mini came out, I
would be entitled to get updated software (e.g. iLife '06) from
Apple for the cost of shipping. Furthermore, I get “free” software
updates to MacOS X. While I agree that an upgrade for the book
might not be workable, at least the PDF should be easily
upgradeable. I bought the Rails book recently (in fact, I haven’t
finished reading it all the way through!) but I might have waited
if I had know a new version was nearing publication.
And if you bought the first edition pdf on or after april 1st, you
get a FREE upgrade, not even the cost of shipping. The “free”
software updates to macosx do not span “versions” (for whatever
cracked out scheme they use to define those) of osx. My ibook came
with 10.3.x, I had to buy 10.4, no discount.
-Scott
Scott B. wrote:
not get a discounted upgrade when the 17" comes out for the same
price! Ergo, I should not expect to get a discount when a new edition
of a book comes out. New happens, be grateful there is a second
edition, and that Dave is busting his hump to keep the book up to date
with the fast pace of Rails. It’s $23, not the $2300 or $23000 we get
shafted on every year on the afore mentioned products.
Not all of these are good analogies.
If I bought a Mac Mini a month before the new Mac Mini came out, I would
be entitled to get updated software (e.g. iLife '06) from Apple for the
cost of shipping. Furthermore, I get “free” software updates to MacOS X.
While I agree that an upgrade for the book might not be workable, at
least the PDF should be easily upgradeable. I bought the Rails book
recently (in fact, I haven’t finished reading it all the way through!)
but I might have waited if I had know a new version was nearing
publication.
How do I upgrade my PDF copy?
On 3 May 2006, at 2:17 pm, Derrick S. wrote:
How about this: Sell your first edition on eBay, and use the
proceeds (which, as in the case of a used car, will be depreciated)
to help pay for the second edition.
I’m tempted to sell my two-month-old copy on eBay before people who
only look at Amazon notice that there’s a new edition on the way, and
live with just having the PDF version of the second edition until the
print version comes out.
Kerry
I, too, bought it recently. The paper book came less than a week ago,
and
it may be that I never remove the shrink wrap.
On Wed, 3 May 2006, Ajai Khattri wrote:
How do I upgrade my PDF copy?
From the announcement Mr. Thomas posted:
If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book. We’ll be sending you instructions by email over
the next few days. (If you have a spam blocker, we suggest
whitelisting pragprog.com and pragmaticprogrammer.com–you’d be
amazed how often our PDF download e-mails get bounced.)
I’ve already gotten my instructions on how to download the beta book.
(I
did have to fish it out of my spam-trap. It rarely gets something
wrong,
but this one it did mistakenly catch.)
It does not say if this beta will be upgraded to the full release. If
not, I’ll be ordering one. I’ll likely order the paper one anyway,
because I like books. (And I like ordering things direct, so the
authors
get more of the money.)
New editions come out. This is bad timing for those of us who just
bought
them. A bummer, but it happens. Good timing happens, too.
–
Louis Erickson - [email protected] - Lou's Home Page!
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
– Frank Zappa
Scott B. wrote:
Who cares? Analogies are approximations, and each of the ones I gave
are approximately accurate.
Judging from this thread, some of us do…
And if you bought the first edition pdf on or after april 1st, you get
a FREE upgrade, not even the cost of shipping. The “free” software
updates to macosx do not span “versions” (for whatever cracked out
scheme they use to define those) of osx. My ibook came with 10.3.x, I
had to buy 10.4, no discount.
Again, PDFs are very similar to software.
On 3-mei-2006, at 22:53, Ajai Khattri wrote:
And if you bought the first edition pdf on or after april 1st, you
get a FREE upgrade, not even the cost of shipping. The “free”
software updates to macosx do not span “versions” (for whatever
cracked out scheme they use to define those) of osx. My ibook
came with 10.3.x, I had to buy 10.4, no discount.
Again, PDFs are very similar to software.
So you agree with Scott then? No discount on the next iteration of
Mac OS X and the new iteration of Railsaxe?
I do.
–
Regards, Charles.
I’m tempted to sell my two-month-old copy on eBay before people who
only look at Amazon notice that there’s a new edition on the way, and
live with just having the PDF version of the second edition until the
print version comes out.
The new paper edition won’t be out for some time. The first edition was
outdated the day Rails 1.1 was released, if not earlier.
I’ve already bought version 2 because the changes are so dramatic. It
paid for itself in about 15 minutes. Heck, download the free demo
chapters they’ve posted and I think most will agree it’s a major
rewrite.
I’m glad they didn’t wait and milk version 1 until it died of old age.
I hate tech books that are out of date and I have to google the new
info. If we don’t pay for the new version, we decrease the incentive to
have new versions come out. I’d prefer that the authors have a complete
incentive to keep us current. I don’t have time to pull all this
together.
Charles M. Gerungan wrote:
So you agree with Scott then? No discount on the next iteration of Mac
OS X and the new iteration of Railsaxe?
I will re-iterate what I said earlier: buying a Mac Mini so close to the
release of the next one meant I was entitled to certain upgrades of the
software (e.g. replacement of iLife with the completely new iLife '06)
for the price of shipping a CDROM. There ought to be some sort of
discount upgrade for someone that has just recently bought the PDF
version of the book
On May 3, 2006, at 3:08 PM, Ajai Khattri wrote:
If I bought a Mac Mini a month before the new Mac Mini came out, I
would be entitled to get updated software (e.g. iLife '06) from
Apple for the cost of shipping. Furthermore, I get “free” software
updates to MacOS X. While I agree that an upgrade for the book
might not be workable, at least the PDF should be easily upgradeable.
And tis is exactly what we modeled our approach on.
If you bought a PDF within a month of the announcement, we gave you a
complementary upgrade.
If you buy a PDF, you get free revisions for the life of that edition.
When a new edition comes along, it’s a cost item.
Exactly as it is for Apple software.
I will re-iterate what I said earlier: buying a Mac Mini so close to the
release of the next one meant I was entitled to certain upgrades of the
software (e.g. replacement of iLife with the completely new iLife '06)
for the price of shipping a CDROM. There ought to be some sort of
discount upgrade for someone that has just recently bought the PDF
version of the book
There is. If you bought the PDF within the past month (since April
1st), you get the new one for free.
David Heinemeier H.
http://www.loudthinking.com – Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com – Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com – Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com – Web-application framework
Puh-leaz! Is $23.50 really too expensive, considering the entire
framework, database, etc. are FREE?!!!
I was just thinking about the cost of my MS products (higher ed
discount):
-
VS.NET 2005 = $203
- SQL Server = ~$4800 for 2 proc license
- Win2K3 = $109
I should now start demanding free books from MS. After all, if a
customer can drop 5+ grand on their software (educational discount, no
less), aren’t I entitled to a few free books?
To all the whiners: think about how much time RoR has saved you and the
fun ride it’s been. Isn’t THAT worth AT LEAST $23.50? I would expect
this kind of childish behavior in the commercial world, but considering
the entire software stack is FREE, what on G~d’s green earth are you
complaining about? Think about how many features you could have added to
your app instead of debating the comparisons of books vs. cars vs. Macs.
Viva La Rails!
-Chris
On May 4, 2006, at 7:29 PM, Jay L. wrote:
[snip: awesome analogy involving gefilte fish, pickled herring and
gastrointestinal issues ]
LOL. it’s just amazing how you can always find a fittingly obvious
kick-ass parable in Jewish folklore. I think you have silenced the
critics.
sebastian