Delphi Books?

Then you're probably familiar with this kind of information:

   http://www.**--****.com/ 

   http://www.**--****.com/ 
   http://www.**--****.com/ 

etc etc.

Technical book sales have been declining for the past few years, and since there 
were fewer delphi books to begin with, they're usually the ones to disappear first. 
The decline is probably partly due to a lot of the information being already freely 
available on the internet, amongst other factors already discussed in the links 
above.

-- 
Dan

I had a look in our local PC world last week. Previously Ive seen
Delphi for sale in there.. (worryingly marked "educational mostly..
puzzle.. at a really nice low price, but I cant qualify fo rit) but..
not now.. I didnt find 1 book or box with borland on..

-- 
Liz the Brit

It appears that Delphi books are no longer being stocked by any major bookstore
chains, at least the brick and mortar type.  This is probably a surprise to no
one.  Yesterday, I happened to visit the Barnes & Noble in Princeton, NJ.  This
was always the best stocked B&N that I know of in the Philadelphia region,
especially for computer and other technical books, perhaps because of its close
proximity to Princeton University.  In years past, there were a number of the
more popular Delphi titles on its shelves even when other B&N stores had none.
Yesterday, there were none to be seen.  I asked the clerk if they had any Delphi
books.  He asked me how you spelled Delphi, being completely unfamiliar with the
product.  He then looked it up in their inventory and low and behold, they had a
single title "Delphi for DotNet".  It was hidden behind another title on the
shelf, which is why I couldn't find it.

Yes, you can get any Delphi title at Amazon, and cheaper than in any bookstore.
   But you have to know that Delphi exists to even look for it.  I generally buy
technical books from Amazon, but I like to have a look at the book first if
possible, thumbing through the pages to see if it looks like it's worth buying.
 I can no longer do that with Delphi or other Borland products.

The most appalling fact is that every language/development platform you can
think of had a book on the shelves at the B&N, many which were very obscure in
that I never heard of them.  The point is that it is pretty impossible for a
product like Delphi to grow and flourish, or even hold it's ground if it does
not appear to exist except to those who currently use it.  Spreading such
information by word of mouth seems to be insufficient.  The disappearance of
most non-Delphi technical magazines that used to have occasional articles about
Delphi doesn't help.  I noticed several book browsers looking at VB books,
people that were either current VB programmers or who may have been
non-programmers who were thinking about diving in somewhere.   With no Delphi
visibility in the bookstores, guess what they are going to select?

I have some understanding of the economics of the book trade.  Shelf space is at
a premium and it is profitable to stock only what sells.  MS language products
dominate followed by Linux and web development tools.  It behooves Borland's
marketing department to do anything they can to put Delphi and other Borland
product books back on the shelves, even if they have to subsidize the book
vendors.  I know that the Delphi book situation is only one aspect of
advertising the product but I believe that visibility is important.  Otherwise,
I am afraid that Delphi's future is very murky.

Mark J. Wallin, Ph.D.
"Walloon"

> It appears that Delphi books are no longer being stocked by any major 


I have also found that B&N among others no longer carries Delphi titles. 
Borders on the other hand seems to always have a few Delphi titles and had 
Cantu's latest when it was released. What's concerning to me is that the 
technical bookstores in my area no longer carry Delphi titles. But part of 
the problem is that there are fewer and fewer new Delphi books being 
published, which goes along with the decline in technical books trend. I 
thought(hoped) the Dotnet boom might lead to renaissance in Delphi books.

Dan 

This seems somewhat encouraging...

     Inside Delphi 2006


 http://www.**--****.com/ 

 - Roddy 

Yeah, I've noticed the decline as well.  The B&N in Nashua, NH used to carry 
a nice assortment of Delphi books.  The last time I was in there they only 
had 1 copy Delphi for DotNet.  And no other Delphi books at all.

What happened to the Borland Marketing Machine?  Delphi beats the pants off 
most other development languages, not too mention its IDE.  If this trend 
keeps up, we'll all have to move to the MS paradigm.  I can't believe I just 
said that...  (:-P)

-Steve-

Delphi has become a mature product, which mostly is used by
professionals these days, already possessing almost unlimited sources of
Delphi knowledge, who have used Delphi many years already.

The day a large number of beginners, students, hobbyists, wannabe
software developers, professional developers etc. start to use Delphi,
from scratch, the market will be there again.


I doubt books will stimulate Delphi sales much, I think it is the other
way around. When Delphi first arrived, the amazing thing with it
was that it was possible to make real Windows applications home on the
kitchen sink so to say, the language was almost plain English, and all
was so logical and intuitive, especially the WYSIWYG philosophy that
saturated the product.

Those days Corel Draw also sold a lot. I had friends who were amazed by
Corel Draw, WOW what we can use the PC for now! and the like. Same with
Delphi. I several in the neighbourhood using Delphi (out on the country
side with scattered population).

The Corel Draw people have found other interests, same with the Delphi guys.

-- 
Ingvar Nilsen
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

Needs an oil change? :)

-- 
Ingvar Nilsen
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

Definitely! Teaching OOP by using Delphi, great.
Wonder whether there is a CD with D2006 or a link to a place where a
free version can be downloaded, to get people started.

-- 
Ingvar Nilsen
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

You may be right there.  I visited my local Borders last week, and they'd
moved the computer books, which originally took up about forty feet of six
foot shelving, to a side section which was both smaller, and only four foot
shelving.  This is a huge cut back.

"Ingvar Nilsen" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote


It's chicken-egg, isn't it? The market won't be there because there aren't
any Delphi books and Pascal is no longer taught in schools which
understandably use Java or C# as a padagogical first language now. Pascal
has become Cobol. On the bright side, for the next several decades, expert
Delphians can expect to get paid decent if they are willing to travel and
help maintain or migrate old Delphi applications.

My local Borders currently carries no Delphi titles but I seem to remember that
they did carry a couple quite a while ago.  It looks like Borders cut back
heavily on its Technical titles.

I seem to remember that Borland at one time had a 'Borland Press' published via
Sams in the distant past.  MS has its own publishing arm which may or may not
make them any money but it sure gives them exposure and the look of success.
Nevermind that their books are mostly incomprehensible and semi-useless.

Mark J. Wallin, Ph.D.
"Walloon"

I agree somewhat with the idea that seeing titles on shelves helps let 
people know it exists as an alternative. However...

It's not only that programming books have seen a significant decline across 
the board in titles and volumes published but the reasons for that:
- There is so much more such information available on the net for free or 
very cheap
- The rapid change in IT has always been a problem for book publishing, IT 
books have a *very* short lifespan before being considered obsolete.
- Books can be purchases cheaper online
- Even the desire to browse is now becoming practical on the net, sample 
chapters or at least TOC is available on many books
- It's easier than ever to sell your used books via Amazon or other online 
outlets and this definitely affects new sales levels.

While I'm sure brick and mortar book stores will be around for a long time, 
it think the trend to *not* carrying technical books, especially, but not 
only, for the IT industry, will continue - the number of such people that 
still prefer to physically browse the shelves has and will continue to 
decline due to continually improving ability to do so electronically.

Just a few short years ago, I was definitely discouraged by the same 
observation, but now I really think technology is making this a non-issue - 
the few that might miss out on or move away from delphi because there are no 
titles in the local bookstore just aren't worth worrying about.

Oh, and visit my RADBooks link below. <g>

-- 
Wayne Niddery - Logic Fundamentals, Inc. (www.logicfundamentals.com)
RADBooks:  http://www.**--****.com/ 
"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others
as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse
pulling the wagon." - Winston Churchill 

I looked at those links and it sure looks like technical books are in a general
decline but you would never guess that from the number of MS related titles,
especially those put out by MS Press.  Whether they are losing money on the
publishing end or not, it gives the illusion of success and {*filter*} of MS
products.  "Borland Press" titles disappeared years ago.  The Borland website
sales section for "Books" refers people to Amazon or other book sellers.  I
would think that a couple of subsidized "Borland Press" books that find their
way to bookstores would be valuable advertising.  Sending such books to computer
science departments and providing electronic versions (along with student or
personal versions of the software) for prospective students wouldn't hurt either.

Books are certainly not going to spread recognition of Delphi by themselves but
do provide a sort of advertising and legitimacy of the product, a reminder that
it is still alive and kicking.  With no presence of the book stores, the
scarcity of ads and articles in non-Delphi magazines, it is not surprising that
non-Borland developers get the notion that Delphi is on its way out and not
worth investigating.

Mark J. Wallin, Ph.D.
"Walloon"

Agreed. Presence of Delphi books cannot hurt, it can do good, it does
good, but I am not sure how much.
Let us take Oslo's largest book store, it had a whole department
dedicated to computing. A whole wall just for HTML, CSS and Javascript,
shelves after shelves on databases, and many Delphi books.

I recently visited the shop, and the data department had been moved down
  to the ba{*filter*}t, and was very small. It had a couple of Delphi books
though :)

Since this has happened, we see a self amplifying effect, because of a
total reduced number of computing titles, there is less point of
visiting the shop, and the marketing effect of Delphi books will thereby
diminish, as I see it.


Yes, but those people are not new Borland customers.

-- 
Ingvar Nilsen
 http://www.**--****.com/