For a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes to software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average.
I took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and specifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning about how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than how to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular abstract concept or niche in software development.
"Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition.
"Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought" is 346 pages, $30 for a print edition.
"Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing" is 536 pages, $36 for an e-book.
It seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that e-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced lower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information is hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium.
Based on that, I would suggest that this Sublime Text book should probably be priced a bit lower. It's an e-book, it's only 220 pages, and though it's nice to have all of the information conveniently packaged in one place, it seems like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large and active).
Edit: I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree, not because they think it doesn't add anything substantive to the discussion. I'm an author myself, so I know how much work goes into producing (and marketing) a book, and I'm totally supportive of the author trying to make the project worth his time. I'm merely pointing out that if you look at the market, its list price should probably be closer to the "with coupon" price.
In addition to the page count people are mentioning, I don't think the Google factor is fair either. Almost anything can be googled, short of bleeding edge, very technical work. It's all about presentation/wording and how easy the author makes it for the reader to understand/consume. I've seen plenty of terrible, terrible guides/tutorials online, but hey, they're free.
> I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree
I think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to the author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about what value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally obsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education is immeasurable. Let the market decide.
Nice reasoning, but I have to agree with others: A shorter, more concise book might be much harder to write and might even take longer!
A quote from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
(I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.)
it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree
Yes, that's why people downvote a lot of things. There's no policy or even guidance against using downvoting for that reason, to the best of my knowledge. (And this is what I was told when I raised similar annoyance a few years ago ;-))
I totally agree! I know that books are difficult to write and the author deserves his or her due. But these are paper prices for electronic content and I just won't pay this much, particularly when most (if not all the information) is available online with just a little effort.
Pricing an ebook based on number of pages is silly. Would you pay 20% more if he added an equivalent number of pages? I think the author should charge more for a shorter book, since it respects the readers time.
The only scenario where the number of pages has any meaning is when the book is meant to be read cover to cover. Otherwise, as is typically the case with dev books, it's really meant as a reference. It seems to me that the page count is irrelevant is in this case. We should be talking about something like the "useful topics count".
Looking at the sample chapter, this book seems reasonably well written and might be a good buy for someone new to ST who wants to get up to speed quickly.
I think calling it a book for power users is highly optimistic. Much of it seems to be more like the manual ST should have had but never has, describing routine tools and pointing out keyboard shortcuts that you could find for yourself just exploring the default keyboard map. That is certainly a useful gap to fill, but there seems to be little if anything in the table of contents about real power user features like defining or customising languages, templates/snippets, themes, plugins, etc. I hope the choice of title doesn't lead to disappointment from actual power users while causing those who would enjoy and benefit from the book to go elsewhere.
I did notice that the sample chapter PDF has quite a few obvious layout problems, and that the expanded TOC on the web site has obvious typos, so the jury is out on editorial/production quality.
As a final comment, the author seems very keen on ST3, which makes me hesitant. I gave up and installed ST3 myself a little while ago, after too many packages I relied on self-updated into just not working any more on ST2. Now instead of a productive text editor that I enjoyed and recommended a year or two ago, I have a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess, which just has different packages I used to rely on that don't work reliably instead. So I'm pretty down on the whole fragmented ST ecosystem and lack of progress/support for existing customers right now. While I assume none of this is the author's fault, perhaps the timing of this book launch is unfortunate; it might be a better buy if and when ST3 and its package ecosystem are up to production quality, updated to reflect whatever the best available supporting packages are at that time.
> While you should be migrated to version 3 already, this book covers both versions 2 and 3 - when there are differences or new functionality in a later version I make a point of saying so and offer solutions to users still on version 2.
Yeah, I guess I just don't understand why I "should be migrated to version 3 already" when a non-dev build has yet to be released. Seems like a nice book otherwise.
Maybe when you get into defining custom languages you're going past "power user" and into the "developer" realm? I think by understanding and using the topics covered in the book you can certainly call yourself a power user by the end.
I've been using ST3's dev builds with no issues whatsoever so I don't see how it's a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess. Maybe your crashes are a result of plugins you use?
I'm just asking myself if this belongs to hacker news. When does something deserve to be posted as "Show HN"? Does the link to what someone wants to show us lead to a rich discussion about tech, start-up, programming, business and other topics of general interest here?
Is it a interesting website, that we can experience and talk about? Is it code? Is it an interesting business idea?
In this case, I think this "Show HN" post is advertsing only.
Nice...I generally skip over the endorsements section but Addy Osamni's statement of confidence caught my eye, and it reminded me why I should even be interested in such a narrowly-tailored book: optimizing workflow.
I've clearly lost brain cells as I've gotten older, but I think I've been able to maintain a constant rate of learning new things by reducing the amount of slack and drag in how I work (and read)...I really like the selling point of "As a developer, I value my time at $100/hr and this book will save me 30 min/day...This means I will have an extra $12,500 per year". That's a nice way to think about it, though it probably underestimates the impact of more time in life.
I like the pricing of the video (at least at the launch price)...I almost never learn via video (yes, I'm that old) but for an extra $9 (or +$5 of the regularly-priced book)...that's not at all a bad deal. And I've been trying to make screencasts on workflow and tooling and am always interested in how the pros teach with video.
By that logic, this is a very expensive book. If it takes 6 hours to read fully it costs $600 + sticker price!
Just because you get paid $100/hr doesnt mean you value your time at $100/hr. In fact in means that you value your time LESS than $100/hr (though not by how much).
Very nice. One thing I'm missing in the TOC is a chapter on creating your own packages: the official docs are (as usual) quite sparse and I'd love to have a couple chapters (tutorial + reference) instead of following the typical "take a look at a existing package and wing it from there" approach. Can someone recommend some good resources on this topic?
Love the concept - but reading the sample chapter, the layout was extremely distracting. Tons of widows/orphans, and even some images that were cut across pages.
When you are selling a book for $36, the bar is a little higher in terms of the quality of the presentation.
Thanks for the feedback - I have a newly formatted version of the book coming out later today which remedies the orphans and adds in some new bookmarking features.
I've been planning on registering my sublime for some time. Gonna do it now. I just did a trial of WebStorm and realized my Sublime setup is still the superior editor (with the right plugins: VIM, git, git gutter, Origami, HTMLPrettify).
I've evaluated it for the past 6 months but looks like they finally convinced me to fork over the cash. If you've been evaluating for more than a few months and you're not a student, pay up!
Wow, I just tried Origami, and it provides exactly the only feature from Sublime Text I was missing, thank you so much!!
Now, I definitely never going back to an IDE, makes no sense any more.
What does it do that WebStorm doesn't? I tried to go from Intellij to Sublime but found so many things were missing, even after installing a pile of plugins.
I know this is probably a common question but are there any student discounts for sublime text? I write nearly all my code in it and I love the editor and want to give back but $70 is way way out of my price range, especially for a text editor.
I know this might not be kosher, but I have to ask, why? I'm all for supporting the artist, but is that the only reason?
Edit: I expected the downvote, but honestly believe that a discussion on this could be valuable. If you're going to downvote me, in return please tell me why you think this question shouldn't be asked.
I can't find a text editor superior to Sublime. Maybe one day I'll buck up and learn vim then join the superiority-complex crowd, but until then Sublime all the way.
I was hoping that Atom would be better or comparable, but just doesn't feel as solid as Sublime. So laggy.
I've used Vim for 19+ years. I've used it on Sun OS, Solaris, HP-UX, Windows (Cygwin and native), Linux and OS X.
I use Sublime Text now.
Why? It's hella fast. It has a great plugin infrastructure and community. It has lots of 21st century niceties with regards to its GUI, retina support, etc. It stays out of my way. Even the ST3-dev versions have been rock solid for me (on OS X, other OSs may vary).
But most of it it's this: the things VIM does, and they are nice, are not that interesting to me. I know how to split and recombine text in 200 different ways, move in all directions by various amounts, do stuff with selections, play with buffers, etc etc.
Those are not the problems I have when I write code. For an admin, or a text monkey this kind of stuff might be more useful. For me they're more like circus acts useful in rare ocassions. In most cases I'm writing like 10 words per minute -- because I'm thing, debugging, designing APIs, and whatever we programmers do.
(I still use Vim whenever I SSH into some server, and as the EDITOR set in the shell).
> Maybe one day I'll buck up and learn vim then join the superiority-complex crowd
Is that the sole reason for learning vim? I mean I am all for investing in productivity, but vim seems to be a tool for geeks to boast about and surprise a lay-person how fast they can work. Is it worth the time you invest to get used to it when you compare it to Sublime Text?
Disappointing that it doesn't have a chapter for plugin development, in my opinion that's the best feature of Sublime Text: You can use all the python ecosystem plus it has a nice API. Plus you understand anyone's plugins because is all python, not some random lang they like.
Just skimming and the content seems really good so far, just a couple of nits to pick. The PDF appears to be missing a table of contents and the chapter links starting on page 2 are not working in Okular running on Ubuntu 14.04 - they appear as links to files on the author's local DropBox.
i love sublime, and i love to learn new things that make me more productive or efficient, so i'm your target audience. if i'd want to convince my boss to buy this (as you suggestest on your salespage :)), i'd probably need a paperprint version... but i'm actually thinking about buying this just for myself.
great work on the sales page! looks very well done.
one thing you can think about: why not let users give you their email address to get the free chapter?
Thanks; I just purchased the book+video; is there a recommended way to print out a paper copy for my own use beyond just hammering my own (or work) printer?
This is personal preference, but I dislike when sites force a download for files which can just as well be displayed in the browser, such as the sample PDF.
I've been trying out Sublime for a couple of months because I wanted a light editor (i.e. not an IDE) and that isn't so difficult to configure as Emacs.
Unfortunately Sublime ain't it. The problem is that my Emacs works better out of the box for everything it does that's important to me. I often find myself unproductive in Sublime, then I go searching for a plugin, then I find myself frustrated because the plugin I found doesn't work well enough for me.
Then I realized the reason for why I moved away from Emacs - it's so good in the things that it does well that you find yourself wanting more, you find yourself wanting to learn ELisp and then you get disappointed by how hard that is. Personally I'm currently rooting for LightTable, hoping to be the successor of Emacs. But it's still too young to tell and maybe a little too flashy for my taste.
I also work with Vim. For replacing Vim it depends on what you do with it. It's more comfortable than Vim for working on projects, but nothing else is better than Vim for quick stuff. Also - all plugins in all editors providing a "Vim mode" suck - that dual mode in Vim's personality is simply incompatible with how the other editors work.
On pricing - I find Sublime to be expensive and the author is releasing paid updates that are minor in delivering new functionality, yet you feel compelled to upgrade because that's were the fixes go.
Upgrading Sublime costs me about the same with IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and that's really not right, because IntelliJ IDEA is a really good IDE clearly worth every penny, plus it has an open-source edition so I'm confident that even if the company goes under, the project can still survive. Whereas Sublime competes with Vim and Emacs, both free, both awesome in what they do and both still being around in 50 years from now.
There are some things that Sublime does well. Things like Textmate-like snippets (available in Emacs in an awesome plugin btw - Yasnippet), multiple cursor editing or "go to everything". Compared to TextMate, at least it works multi-platform and have been using it without problems on both Ubuntu and OS X, but that's not a problem that Vim users have :)
But try it out by yourself, because this choice is personal and nobody else will be able to tell you what's the best environment for you.
I was using vim as my primary coding platform for a decade until I met sublime text. Notepad++, crimson editor never cut it for me but ST impressed me from the beginning and continued to give me features and freedom to do whatever I want (except print). You can't ever hang up vim since it's much quicker to edit using vim when you're ssh'd into a server. But if the files are locally or on a share I prefer Sublime Text for the following reasons:
* Vim in Windows never felt good to me.
* Multi-cursor editing
* auto-recover unsaved files upon loading the program
* snippets (type a little get a lot back)
* the ability to use a hotkey to open files quickly
* the robust hotkeys, regexs, and visual feedback are on par or better than vim.
[+] [-] jawns|11 years ago|reply
For a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes to software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average.
I took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and specifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning about how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than how to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular abstract concept or niche in software development.
"Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition.
"Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought" is 346 pages, $30 for a print edition.
"Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing" is 536 pages, $36 for an e-book.
It seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that e-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced lower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information is hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium.
Based on that, I would suggest that this Sublime Text book should probably be priced a bit lower. It's an e-book, it's only 220 pages, and though it's nice to have all of the information conveniently packaged in one place, it seems like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large and active).
Edit: I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree, not because they think it doesn't add anything substantive to the discussion. I'm an author myself, so I know how much work goes into producing (and marketing) a book, and I'm totally supportive of the author trying to make the project worth his time. I'm merely pointing out that if you look at the market, its list price should probably be closer to the "with coupon" price.
[+] [-] moogleii|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|11 years ago|reply
I think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to the author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about what value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally obsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education is immeasurable. Let the market decide.
[+] [-] wesbos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Walkman|11 years ago|reply
A quote from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." (I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.)
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] petercooper|11 years ago|reply
Yes, that's why people downvote a lot of things. There's no policy or even guidance against using downvoting for that reason, to the best of my knowledge. (And this is what I was told when I raised similar annoyance a few years ago ;-))
[+] [-] robertlf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanbarry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanpg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwenzel|11 years ago|reply
Some people are willing to pay for brevity.
[+] [-] enknamel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elwell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Silhouette|11 years ago|reply
I think calling it a book for power users is highly optimistic. Much of it seems to be more like the manual ST should have had but never has, describing routine tools and pointing out keyboard shortcuts that you could find for yourself just exploring the default keyboard map. That is certainly a useful gap to fill, but there seems to be little if anything in the table of contents about real power user features like defining or customising languages, templates/snippets, themes, plugins, etc. I hope the choice of title doesn't lead to disappointment from actual power users while causing those who would enjoy and benefit from the book to go elsewhere.
I did notice that the sample chapter PDF has quite a few obvious layout problems, and that the expanded TOC on the web site has obvious typos, so the jury is out on editorial/production quality.
As a final comment, the author seems very keen on ST3, which makes me hesitant. I gave up and installed ST3 myself a little while ago, after too many packages I relied on self-updated into just not working any more on ST2. Now instead of a productive text editor that I enjoyed and recommended a year or two ago, I have a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess, which just has different packages I used to rely on that don't work reliably instead. So I'm pretty down on the whole fragmented ST ecosystem and lack of progress/support for existing customers right now. While I assume none of this is the author's fault, perhaps the timing of this book launch is unfortunate; it might be a better buy if and when ST3 and its package ecosystem are up to production quality, updated to reflect whatever the best available supporting packages are at that time.
[+] [-] sandipc|11 years ago|reply
> While you should be migrated to version 3 already, this book covers both versions 2 and 3 - when there are differences or new functionality in a later version I make a point of saying so and offer solutions to users still on version 2.
Yeah, I guess I just don't understand why I "should be migrated to version 3 already" when a non-dev build has yet to be released. Seems like a nice book otherwise.
[+] [-] xs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wldcordeiro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KobaQ|11 years ago|reply
Is it a interesting website, that we can experience and talk about? Is it code? Is it an interesting business idea?
In this case, I think this "Show HN" post is advertsing only.
[+] [-] danso|11 years ago|reply
I've clearly lost brain cells as I've gotten older, but I think I've been able to maintain a constant rate of learning new things by reducing the amount of slack and drag in how I work (and read)...I really like the selling point of "As a developer, I value my time at $100/hr and this book will save me 30 min/day...This means I will have an extra $12,500 per year". That's a nice way to think about it, though it probably underestimates the impact of more time in life.
I like the pricing of the video (at least at the launch price)...I almost never learn via video (yes, I'm that old) but for an extra $9 (or +$5 of the regularly-priced book)...that's not at all a bad deal. And I've been trying to make screencasts on workflow and tooling and am always interested in how the pros teach with video.
So, sold.
[+] [-] grimtrigger|11 years ago|reply
Just because you get paid $100/hr doesnt mean you value your time at $100/hr. In fact in means that you value your time LESS than $100/hr (though not by how much).
[+] [-] stronglikedan|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/perfect-workflow-in-sublime...
[+] [-] _raul|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
When you are selling a book for $36, the bar is a little higher in terms of the quality of the presentation.
[+] [-] wesbos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wesbos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevX101|11 years ago|reply
I've evaluated it for the past 6 months but looks like they finally convinced me to fork over the cash. If you've been evaluating for more than a few months and you're not a student, pay up!
[+] [-] Walkman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willemmerson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lrigikithumer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lambdanaut|11 years ago|reply
Edit: I expected the downvote, but honestly believe that a discussion on this could be valuable. If you're going to downvote me, in return please tell me why you think this question shouldn't be asked.
[+] [-] kendallpark|11 years ago|reply
I was hoping that Atom would be better or comparable, but just doesn't feel as solid as Sublime. So laggy.
Has anyone read this book? Good reviews?
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
I use Sublime Text now.
Why? It's hella fast. It has a great plugin infrastructure and community. It has lots of 21st century niceties with regards to its GUI, retina support, etc. It stays out of my way. Even the ST3-dev versions have been rock solid for me (on OS X, other OSs may vary).
But most of it it's this: the things VIM does, and they are nice, are not that interesting to me. I know how to split and recombine text in 200 different ways, move in all directions by various amounts, do stuff with selections, play with buffers, etc etc.
Those are not the problems I have when I write code. For an admin, or a text monkey this kind of stuff might be more useful. For me they're more like circus acts useful in rare ocassions. In most cases I'm writing like 10 words per minute -- because I'm thing, debugging, designing APIs, and whatever we programmers do.
(I still use Vim whenever I SSH into some server, and as the EDITOR set in the shell).
[+] [-] shubhamjain|11 years ago|reply
Is that the sole reason for learning vim? I mean I am all for investing in productivity, but vim seems to be a tool for geeks to boast about and surprise a lay-person how fast they can work. Is it worth the time you invest to get used to it when you compare it to Sublime Text?
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ivanca|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] code_chimp|11 years ago|reply
The epub looks pretty good on the iPad.
[+] [-] stuntmachine|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnm|11 years ago|reply
great work on the sales page! looks very well done.
one thing you can think about: why not let users give you their email address to get the free chapter?
[+] [-] zaatar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdknsk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pamar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deevus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhaumik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alphabetam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bad_user|11 years ago|reply
I've been trying out Sublime for a couple of months because I wanted a light editor (i.e. not an IDE) and that isn't so difficult to configure as Emacs.
Unfortunately Sublime ain't it. The problem is that my Emacs works better out of the box for everything it does that's important to me. I often find myself unproductive in Sublime, then I go searching for a plugin, then I find myself frustrated because the plugin I found doesn't work well enough for me.
Then I realized the reason for why I moved away from Emacs - it's so good in the things that it does well that you find yourself wanting more, you find yourself wanting to learn ELisp and then you get disappointed by how hard that is. Personally I'm currently rooting for LightTable, hoping to be the successor of Emacs. But it's still too young to tell and maybe a little too flashy for my taste.
I also work with Vim. For replacing Vim it depends on what you do with it. It's more comfortable than Vim for working on projects, but nothing else is better than Vim for quick stuff. Also - all plugins in all editors providing a "Vim mode" suck - that dual mode in Vim's personality is simply incompatible with how the other editors work.
On pricing - I find Sublime to be expensive and the author is releasing paid updates that are minor in delivering new functionality, yet you feel compelled to upgrade because that's were the fixes go.
Upgrading Sublime costs me about the same with IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and that's really not right, because IntelliJ IDEA is a really good IDE clearly worth every penny, plus it has an open-source edition so I'm confident that even if the company goes under, the project can still survive. Whereas Sublime competes with Vim and Emacs, both free, both awesome in what they do and both still being around in 50 years from now.
There are some things that Sublime does well. Things like Textmate-like snippets (available in Emacs in an awesome plugin btw - Yasnippet), multiple cursor editing or "go to everything". Compared to TextMate, at least it works multi-platform and have been using it without problems on both Ubuntu and OS X, but that's not a problem that Vim users have :)
But try it out by yourself, because this choice is personal and nobody else will be able to tell you what's the best environment for you.
[+] [-] xs|11 years ago|reply
* Vim in Windows never felt good to me. * Multi-cursor editing * auto-recover unsaved files upon loading the program * snippets (type a little get a lot back) * the ability to use a hotkey to open files quickly * the robust hotkeys, regexs, and visual feedback are on par or better than vim.
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RubberMullet|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaset|11 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418552
[+] [-] jackmoore|11 years ago|reply