Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

I've enjoyed having an O'Reilly Safari subscription for random access to books. In particular, the Pragmatic Programmer and Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

I've also had good experiences with SCPD courses from Stanford, if your budget would cover those (they are at the other end of the price spectrum).

View on HN

For anyone in India, the cheapest way to get a Safari Books subscription is via an ACM Professional or Student membership. It’s only INR 1500 per year.

Going through the student membership options, this seems to be only for current students. Was I missing something here?

I think that is as intended. People who are no longer students should select the Professional membership option, which is what I did.

I frequently muse about whether Safari, which is valuable, is worth the $399/y

Pro: I like being able to sample the same topic from many prospectives (one chapter from each of 3-5 books)

Cons: I wouldn't spend /that/ much on books in a year, the quality of the videos is widely variable, the search (including quality filtering) is _terrible_, and the inability to bookmark specific talks within a conference is infuriating. Part of the pain is how close it is to being really good!

What's your pro/con list?

To be honest, I didn't realize it was that expensive for an individual (we might have some sort of team pricing -- I'm not sure what my seat cost but I assumed it was cheaper than that). At that rate, you're probably better off with a $400/y budget for paper O'Reilly books.

That said, it is fun to be able to randomly access books on a topic without having to decide whether or not to buy them.

If you get an ACM membership, which costs $99/yr, you get access to Safari as a membership benefit.

I have a work subscription and never use it. The interface is so terrible I’d rather pay for the book

And check your local library. Here in Seattle you get to use Safari if you have a library card.

Toronto too albeit the old version.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com