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My first bad book review

I got my first bad book review on Amazon. It doesn't bother me that much aside from the fact that the author is clearly not even remotely a part of the target audience. I see that quite a bit in Amazon reviews. I remember one ages ago, I think for one of Alex Homer's books, where the reviewer went on and on about how the book doesn't tell you about this or that, and it was a beginner book! I've always been a fan of his writing style, and if it wasn't for him I don't know if I would've ever started coding again.

Fortunately the feedback I've been getting via e-mail has been pretty good. A guy from Spain, despite an apology about having poor English skills (apparently he's never seen teen chat-speak by American kids?), simply said, "I get it now." That's the greatest compliment I could ever get, because that was always the intention of the book.

Now that I've been away from it for awhile, I think the one thing I would do differently is perhaps do another example chapter that applies basic OO concepts. I went with the data access/container object example because the thing I've seen more than anything in bad code is repetitive data access, though I'm kind of a hypocrite because I rarely combine data access and some kind of object representing the data into one thing anymore. Then again, perhaps that's a natural progression for a learning developer. It certainly was for me.
Posted: Apr 11 2005, 07:58 PM by Jeff | with 2 comment(s)
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Comments

sureshot said:

Jeff, I have the book. I got it on Friday through theregister . I really like it. I think its the 'next step' book for people who have read 'unleashing asp.net' or wrox 'pro asp.net' before going onto heavier reads like Fowlers & GOF stuff. It bridges a gap for people who have come from more scripted languages into an OO world. I like your writing style, and although I can't say that any topic was unknown to me, I certainly understood them all infinitely better once I'd finished reading. keep up the good work. can i request that your next book is '.Net Design Patterns For Dummies' to help bridge the gap further.
# April 12, 2005 10:04 AM

Jeff said:

Thanks. Feel free to write an Amazon review. :)

Your suggestion about a design pattern book is a really good idea. I read most of the Head First Design Patterns book (technically for Java, but easy to understand for C# people), and it was a refreshing read on a ridiculously boring subject. We need something like that in the .NET space, although I don't know that we need all of the pictures.

The biggest issue is trying to pitch something like that. The more advanced you get, the smaller the audience. Marketing means so much in computer book publishing. It was a real pain trying to position this book, even though I knew exactly who I was writing for. It's hard to convey that sometimes. The first draft of the back cover text was absolutely horrible (I didn't write it). What's on there now isn't horrible, but I think the preface is the real seller. I only hope people bother to read it when considering a purchase.
# April 12, 2005 11:06 AM
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