I've been lead author and co-author on several books on programming. My first book sold tens of thousands of copies even though the writing was not just trash but a crime against humanity against anyone who had to read it. This was back in the day when the source code for the book was provided on request on a floppy, which was actually quite rigid because it was a Mac floppy.

My writing got better and better, and I got better publishers who actually hired editors, but the books sold fewer and fewer copies. Even crappy self-serving poorly written stackoverflow posts are often good enough. Then LLMs killed stackoverflow. Is that real ironic or Alanis ironic?

But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a book deal from OpenAI.

> My first book sold tens of thousands of copies even though the writing was not just trash but a crime against humanity against anyone who had to read it.

I’m sure I never read your book, but there is something cathartic about reading an admission like this. I have no doubt people got value out of your books, but I distinctly remember as a kid saving up to buy a couple expensive programming books from the bookstore and then being sorely disappointed in the way they were written. At the time I thought I was too young to understand adult writing, but when I went back to the books later as an adult it was obvious they were just written by amateurs. I still cherished them and learned a lot, but I will always remember the struggle of trying to follow along with what was probably some first-time writer’s attempt to learn how to write as they went along.

> Then LLMs killed stackoverflow.

I think the common consensus is that stackoverflow killed stackoverflow, quite a few years before LLMs became entrenched.

> But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a book deal from OpenAI.

Was this title eligible for class action status in the recent Anthropic scanning case? I know people who popped up on the list decades after writing obscure or forgotten technical titles. The estimated payout is $3k per title, usually split between publisher and author.

https://www.authorsalliance.org/2025/09/07/the-anthropic-set...