Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?

On Feb 4, 2008 3:31 PM, Tom Hart <tomhart(at)coopfed(dot)org> wrote:
>
> Christopher Browne wrote:
> > On Jan 31, 2008 4:40 PM, Guy Rouillier <guyr-ml1(at)burntmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> >> Robert Treat wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Just so you know, I approached OReally about writing a PostgreSQL Cookbook,
> >>> and they turned it down. They did offer me some other titles, but those don't
> >>> seem to have gone anywhere.
> >>>
> >> As someone else pointed out in this thread, very much of what you need
> >> to know has been previously discussed at one point; the hard part is
> >> finding it.
> >>
> >> What we need is for some of the people with the big brains ;) to come up
> >> with some new kind of "hyperbook". That would be the documentation in
> >> some form similar to what it is today, but somehow connected to the
> >> discussions that happen in the mailing lists. That way, when something
> >> really insightful or helpful gets said in the mailing lists, it can get
> >> connected to a particular place in the documentation. Then over time,
> >> the doc maintainers can take the best of those and incorporate them
> >> directly into the docs at the appropriate place.
> >>
> >
> > The trouble is that this is nearly as much trouble as actually writing
> > a book, and doesn't provide a clear incentive for people to put in the
> > effort of making it happen.
> >
> > There's the problem (and it is, to a degree, truly a problem) that the
> > "postgreSQL book" market hasn't been lucrative enough to draw people
> > into writing books. And honestly, it *needs* to be more lucrative.
> > If I'm thinking about alternative uses for my spare time, writing does
> > not appear to be a particularly profitable use.
> >
> > Finding a "poor man's way" to generate a "hyperbook" actually needs
> > much the same sorts of skills and efforts, even though it probably
> > provides those that provide the effort with *less* benefits.
> >
> Personally I'm surprised that the last couple responses seem to center
> around not being able to make much money off of it. I agree that it
> would require some time investment, but so did building PG in the first
> place. Countless people have already sacrificed hours upon hours of
> their time with no return on their investment except pride in their work
> and a better overall product for everybody to use. I'm not a talented
> enough programmer to contribute to the code, but in this way I can do
> something to give back to the pg community.

It's not all purely "charity," and the point was never about trying to
"make as much money as possible" off of it.

And I think the frequency of "no return on their investment" is rather
lower than you do. It is typical for people to add features to free
software systems *that they find useful.* There are quite a number of
people paid to work on PG; the people that pay them *DO* expect a
return on this investment.

There is a deep, fundamental problem with documentation:

- Those people that *UNDERSTAND* things well enough to be able to
write something worth reading need to be about as knowledgeable as the
"deep in the weeds developers."

- It's regarded as being much easier than that.

GOOD documentation (as opposed to "whatever crud we might put up at
some web page") isn't easy to get, and requires a substantial
investment of time and effort.

Given that people have many things competing for their time, I don't
think it's at all strange to expect that this investment lead to some
kind of substantial benefit.
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