On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Daniel Bünzli wrote:

> Very often what is needed is a way to figure out how you can do this or 
> that in the language along with relevant pointers in the documentation 
> graph. This is why I think that a bunch of well edited online tutorials 
> would do a better job; assuming that the reader has a minimal knowledge 
> of the language, something like the first two chapter of the ocaml 
> reference manual with a little more details.

I have a theory (backed up with a fair bit of circumstancial evidence) 
that a large number of purchasing decisions are influenced by the number 
of running feet of books in the local bookstore are dedicated to the 
topic.  The theory is (as I infer it) 'if I have a problem, I'll simply 
buy a book to tell me how to solve it.  After all, look at all of these 
books!  Surely one of them will be what I need!'

Having *the* perfect introductory book is actually a detriment, as 
it discourages other books from entering the field, thus reducing your 
runnning foot total.  Likewise, being intuitive or easy to understand is 
also a detriment, as this makes both for fewer books and for slimmer 
books.  Much better to have multi-thousand page tomes (tombs?).  And 
naturally, you can't measure running feet of web pages :-).

Brian


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