Comment by dlisboa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dlisboa | Hacker News Reader

Google has little to do with it, but as much respect I have for Meyer I can't feel bad for him in the slightest:

> You can buy it at Amazon [5] for $97.40, a bit less for a used copy.

People would still pirate it if it cost $0.97, but why are you even pursuing that kind of exorbitant pricing? If it was your publisher that made that price, why personally complain if you don't agree? If I'm an educator, my calling is to teach. It isn't to make exorbitant amounts of money from my words, it is for my words to reach as many people as they can and maybe help someone.

He has a (I imagine) highly well-paid job and could get an even more financially rewarding one anytime he wants in an industry that'd be pining to hire him. If this was his publisher making the post I'd understand. But personally complaining about how someone in Indonesia is stealing your overpriced textbook to try to pass on that intellectual knowledge to others who are (most likely) less privileged is just impossible to sympathize with.

Were they misrepresenting his work or something similar? If it's that I can understand protecting your IP. If it's merely redistributing it then no, I can't.

I'm biased because I don't agree with nearly any part of Intellectual Property, but my problem here isn't ideological, just material: pricing it out of reach for 80% of the world's population and then complaining when people want access to it.

I picked up a legal copy for about < $5 in 1999 at a book store near Peking University. They do (or did) price the book for the market; it was in English (back then), and was a crappy printing, but hey...it was cheap! These days, they've translated the cheap copy into Chinese, but its still reasonably priced.

I guess my point is: books are like drugs and are priced according to local market conditions. So the rich Americans pay more (they get nicer binding, but still...) and subsidize the rest of the world.

I doubt Bertrand makes that much money on being an author (who does?), and if he wrote the book in today rather than 20 years ago, things could be very different: self published, e-copies, whatever. But he made that deal back before any of this was an option.

But thar be pirates in those waters: in countries where IP is not respected this will happen. Piracy is quite wrong and its not weird that people have a problem with it. We should respect property rights, we don't have to buy it unless we are Dr. Meyers students.

Pity: its not a bad book, but is definitely dated and is probably no longer a must read, definitely not worth $90. Cutting the cost to make it more consummate with its value would be better.

> I guess my point is: books are like drugs and are priced according to local market conditions. So the rich Americans pay more (they get nicer binding, but still...) and subsidize the rest of the world.

Absolutely not, and I think your idea of global and local market conditions are completely unfounded. "Rich Americans" don't subsidize the rest of the world.

An example for this particular setting: I'm from Brazil where a copy of this book simply does not exist. It needs to be imported, which will be the precise price of the book in dollars, converted to reais, plus shipping and the local library's fee (if you don't buy from Amazon).

If I could buy a copy of it for R$50 I would right now. But as it stands it'd cost me ~R$200 for a new copy. People who don't have that kind of money to spend on a technical book are simply priced out of knowledge.

> I doubt Bertrand makes that much money on being an author (who does?)

I agree, he probably gets a very small percentage.

But he's not just an author, he's a PhD professor and a software consultant. Writing books isn't his only job and he probably makes more money in a single year of his other activities than he did in the sale of all of his books combined. If we were talking about someone who is a pure writer I'd agree somewhat. But if he wasn't a professor and a software consultant he would never have written that book, so it's just an offshoot of his other professional activities.

> We should respect property rights, we don't have to buy it unless we are Dr. Meyers students.

We don't have to buy anything. Not even his students do. But if we want to acquire knowledge we must. The point is, to those who are producing this knowledge, do you want to enhance people's intellect or do you want to make money? If it's the latter, and you are already handsomely paid, I won't shed a tear when your intellectual property rights are ignored.

I wouldn't have a problem if it wasn't him, personally, complaining.

He's not allowed to complain because he (assumedly) has a high-paying job? That's ridiculous.

I frequently find authorized textbooks in S Korea and Taiwan at 10-20% of US prices, with clear "not for sale in North America" labeling, so yes, I think this does happen.

For those on a budget, search for this book's ISBN on Abe Books. This edition looks like it's available for around $30, plus or minus. I suppose shipping would make this somewhat less attractive in Brasil, but probably still better.

Abe Books sells used books, as well as international editions. YMMV on the legality of the international editions.

Amazon is selling a used copy in good condition for $15.

It is priced like a textbook (not that that is an excuse but it is an explanation). The fact that it is a textbooks is likely also why it is highly pirated.

I checked the book out on Amazon[1] and, bizarrely, you can buy it new for $96.89, used for $45.87, and you can "rent" it for $62.79. If I were still in college I would get the $50 copy and try to resell it to a student the following semester for $40 (campus bookstore would probably buy it back for $5). Or if I were a broke student I'd just use the library's reserved copy (you can't check it out but nobody ever took advantage of this when I was at school so it was always available to use at the library).

1: http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Software-Construction-...

Not to mention it's the second edition from 1997. Hasn't anything happened in OOD/OOP during the last 15+ years that would make it worth updating?

Edit: I just skimmed the table of contents (11 pages) and while I suspect there are some nuggets of gold in the book, I'm not sure they're worth reading 1500 pages. I've found that the problems new developers have with OOD/OOP are architectural and generally related to a specific language and/or framework.

I think it would be worth perusing (not buying), just to see if he still recommends that procedures (routines with side effects) should never return any value, but should instead set one or more member variables - one or more per procedure - which callers should access after the call by separate getter methods. Really.

Your first paragraph admits that he may not have any control over the pricing and then your last paragraph implies that he does. How did that happen?

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