ACM Skills Bundle Add-On | Hacker News Reader

ACM Skills Bundle Add-On

learning.acm.org

36 pointsrufus_foreman11 comments

It was a bummer when the O'Reilly benefit last year [0], but I'm glad they're bringing it back at a steep discount from the street price. Access to thousands of O'Reilly books, Manning books, MIT Press books, and more for $75/year (on top of your $100/year membership) is still a solid deal.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30932790

Grumble, grumble. This (at least O'Reilly and Skillsoft) used to be included with the professional membership.

And did I ever tell you kids that Hershey Bars cost 5 cents each when I was in grade school?

13 years or so ago they gave access to O'Reilly at something like half off, cost around $150-200 IIRC. And that was just O'Reilly. Then that went away. Then they gave free access to a limited set of what O'Reilly offers (my account through my employer has many more books than what they were offering under the previous service). Now they charge $75 for more than they used to give access to. Times change.

O'Reilly (and others) are not owned by ACM, they can't control it they can only influence the contract they get but are still stuck with whatever those orgs agree to. In the same time period they've massively opened up their digital library so now I can share out links to people without them needing access themselves, and content I used to have to pay to access (on top of my membership) is just part of it. That's what they can control, and they've been moving in the right direction there. I have few complaints.

O'Reilly was one of my favorite reasons to get ACM. The cost is higher than before, but probably still worth it.

This is such good news. It was a huge bummer when O'Reilly was removed last year, and glad it's coming back, even at a price bump. I'm all for paying a fair price for quality content, but my use case (reading a couple of books per year, and scanning a handful of others) doesn't justify the $499 regular price tag. The add-on Skills Bundle fills this gap nicely.

If I have the lifetime membership is it still an additional charge? I think so but I can't tell for sure.

> ACM's O'Reilly Online Learning collection provides access to more than 60,000 online books and video courses from O'Reilly and other top publishers, recorded O'Reilly Superstream videos, and playlists.

That's a great change for 75$ USD/yr.

I tired to check the price, but unfortunately this is only available for professional members and not student members.

Edit: although most STEM universities provide access to O'Reilly, I would have been very interested in the Pluralsight access.

Well damn, looks like I will be renewing after all.

What is this good for in the modern day of online tutorials?

Some people learn best from books, and some people want to or need to work with legacy technologies where a book is the best way to learn.

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