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> I still remember in the early 2000s Barnes and Noble would still have massive shelf space devoted to every technical topic you could imagine.

B&N, and Borders, are how I learned to code. Directionless after college, I thought, hey, why not learn how to make websites? And I'd spend a lot of time after work reading books at these stores (and yes, buying too).

The UW bookstore in Seattle like many big science schools had a wondrous technical book section. Isles of Springer. The bookstore itself is a shadow of its former shelf.

My own college experience heavily soured me on both book stores and especially school run book stores. The markup was obscene and their buy back rates were worse.

Half price books and a few other book stores lulled me back a few times, but nonfiction books are kept around mostly as eye candy at this point.

All the US universities outsourced their bookstores.

Now I can't even walk in and browse what books the various departments are using for classes, anymore. Everything is now behind bars and completely inaccessible.

Yes, I was so disappointed with my visit last year - not yet hopeless, but close to it. Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle is a better place.

Elliot Bay is a shadow of what it used to be when it was in Pioneer Square.

We should all take the train to Powell's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books

Which one? The original one in Chicago or that other one in Portland?

Elliott Bay is in Seattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Bay

Thanks. I was making a joke about Powell's original location. A lot of people think it was in Portland, but it's actually Chicago (Hyde Park area).

Same with the Stanford university bookstore. Was one of the better bookstores in the Bayarea. Used to have a whole room of technical, science, math books. It too is a shadow of its former self. So sad.

I cry when I visit the Stanford Bookstore. In the 1980's if I needed any technical book, it was there. Now, just stupid clothing.

I too am avid reader and was visiting five local bookstores on a weekly basis. Several of them had huge areas stocked with tech books. I had tried Amazon maybe six months after it launched and bought there sporadically. But almost any book i sought was available locally and the savings weren't worth the convenience of purchasing locally.

Then in a three month period in late Spring 2000 all the programming books disappeared. Then my choice was between Amazon with quick delivery and the local store with a slower delivery and a higher price. So been buying from Amazon ever since and I can't remember the last time I have visited a bookstore.

> told me it was even more incredible during the height of the dotcom boom

I was a developer in the 90s before Netscape even came out. I didn't have a computer at home and dialup barely existed. If you wanted to do computer stuff you had to read. If you wanted to try a library you had to buy a CD from a bookstore or mail in an order which would get posted to you.

> As an avid reader (and sometimes writer) of technical books, it's sad to see the, perhaps inevitable, decline of the space.

When I think about this, I get a little bit scared. Imagine books going away, even if it's just the subcategory of technical books.

The printed word has been around for a long time. The number of things that have been printed has always gone up. It really bothers me that that's changing.

PDFs and websites are no substitute for printed paper bound in a cover. PDFs and websites are a fallback when the preferred media isn't available, they are not supposed to be the preferred media. All of the of the reasons that people have given over the years are applicable when it comes to why paper is superior for this.

For the (very) long term, books may be superior, but for the non-illustrated fiction short term, eBooks and an eReader are vastly better. Reading synced to my phone and tablet, takes up less space than a single paperback, and immediate delivery of the next book.

Also, physical books are immutable; electronic content is not. Orwell was not wrong, just premature.

Ugh, tell me about it. In Canada, Chapters put the knife in the independents. They used to have a great selection. Once there was no competition, they reduced their selection by turning half their floor space into selling pillows and candles.

This makes sense, "enough" of the old technical info is in the AI brains now and easily accessed via a query.

A lossy compressed version of it, at least.

But a lot of is also in blogs and (video) tutorials. As well as Stack Overflow.

And all very searchable.

The old brick-of-paper approach to tech manuals just isn't a thing any more. I don't particularly miss it.

It was, if you think about, usually a slow and inefficient way to present information - often better at presenting what was possible than how to do make it happen.

> often better at presenting what was possible than how to do make it happen.

that, i feel, is the chilling aspect to this situation. does the lack of new books explaining what's possible, imply that our society's opportunites for growth are dwindling?

Ada's these days is more about politics than technology.

What kind of politics? I mean, what do they sell, little to no tech books?

Just go see for yourself?

Not living in the US, so cannot.

Weird, I have honestly never walked into a Barnes and Noble and had satisfaction with any of their technical content on the shelf. That pleasure died when we lost Borders.

*Edit: spell correct kills me!

Yeah, peak experience for me was when our town had both a Borders and B&N offering huge tech book sections. Then Borders closed. Then B&N became a toy store.

Borders was always the king for books, magazines and DVD media.