mgr86

In the late 90s I bought my first "tech book" at 12. I have fond memories of _Sams Tech yourself Perl in 24 hours_. I had read the first few hours already. My mom would drive my brother and I 30 minutes to Borders what felt like every month. I always gravitated to the tech books.

As I walk into my office today I see two walls full of book shelves crammed with forgotten and well annotated books. Most inherited from my former boss who retired at the beginning of COVID.I have books on Unicode, XML, Java, Struts, Information Architecture, Sed, and a heck of a lot more. Some older books too. Like a 1990 edition of "Full Text Databases".

But it got me thinking, he last purchased a book about a decade before he retired. I haven't been to a book store in ages. Heck, I barely use my companies subscription to Proquest/Safari books online anymore. I was once enamored with all of the digital copies of Tech Books I had at my fingertips.

I've been at conferences with the writers of some of these old books I have in my office. Many aren't writing books anymore. A few will share horror stories about their own book writing experience.

I imagine my experience is not unique around HN. So to my question, are we still producing and consuming "Tech Books" in 2025?