A compliment actually, not a question or complaint:

I've been a commercial programmer for 25 years (since I was 14.) When the X Window System came out, we bought your books in bulk for the programming team that ported our code to X and that's when we discovered O'Reilly & Assoc.

For the past six years, I've been teaching programming to engineers. I recommend your books above all, and the Wrox press "red" books as well. I "disrecommend" Addison-Weseley books because they are laden with technical errors and a lack of editing. (In one memorable case, a PenPoint-related book by Andy Novobilski, they printed a figure containing nothing more than the phrase "Postscript Error" in beautiful Courier... but I digress.)

A year ago, I purchased your JavaScript: The Definitive Reference. Now it's time to upgrade to the new edition. Lo and behold, you have an upgrade policy! This is exceedingly cool, you know. Thanks for publishing a steady series of exceptionally well-written and well-edited titles year-in and year-out.

-- David Schachter

David,

You're welcome! Unlike most publishers, we started out as users of the technologies we write about. So we do the things we want for ourselves. High quality books that tell it like it is. Lay flat binding. And an upgrade policy!

I think you're being bit unfair to Addison-Wesley, though. In general, their books are of very high quality. They have published more books that I wish I had published than any other publisher. Don't let one bad experience sour you.

--Tim

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