[wordToDaBird]

I have read 4/5 of their books. and 4 editions of the Big Nerd Ranch Android Development, 2 of the Big Nerd Ranch iOS Programming. I found those books exemplary with their quality and depth of the topics with which they taught. I would put the technical guides of similar quality to O’Reilly, and I want to say better than Pakt and I like Pakt.

I am sad to see this go. I read the first one of their books when I was less than a year in the industry.

[danpalmer]

I wholeheartedly agree on the quality of BNR books, but I’ve always found Pakt to be pretty poor. I consider Pakt books to be overpriced even when 90% off in some big bundle. If you’re getting value out of them, great, I don’t want to diminish that, but for anyone considering them, there are far better options.

I say this having been a technical reviewer on a Pakt book. It was filled with errors, surface level, poorly written and edited, and my main feedback was ignored because it would have added 10 pages, even though it would also have significantly improved the learning outcomes of the book for the specific topic it was about.

[BrentOzar]

To anyone considering writing for Pakt, you owe it to yourself to read any random 5 of their books, and then consider whether you want your name to be attached to that reputation.

The books really are that bad. I think less of someone when I know they've written a book for Pakt.

[danpalmer]

I tech-reviewed "Node Security". It was something like 7 chapters, where each chapter basically took 1 popular at the time Node library related to auth and implemented in a web app.

I checked all the code samples, found a vulnerability in one, pushed for some misc changes. The quality of the English in it was atrocious (no criticism of the author, writing prose isn't everyone's strong suit) even post Pakt's editing, and I actually found 90% of my feedback was correcting grammar or improving readability, things I'd expect them to be doing.

My main contribution was recommending a chapter on deployment. Fine, the book isn't going to be a technical marvel, but a quick last chapter saying "put your server behind Nginx, here's a bit of config" would have massively improved the security posture of anything being developed from the book, and also educated readers about Node Security far more than any of the other chapters. I gave a thorough and reasoned technical rationale for the inclusion of the chapter. They said no, the book was a 7 chapter book.

I got paid with 1 physical copy of the <100 page book, and 1 free ebook voucher for any other Pakt title.

[_mlbt]

Unfortunately I think computer books in general are on the decline. It's just very hard for that medium to keep up with the pace of change. This saddens me because it is by far my preferred method of learning new technology, but it certainly seems like video content is winning out over books. YouTube, Udemy, WWDC videos, and similar seem to be the best way to get up to date information now.

There are still some high quality publishers out there, but I fear that we're coming to the end of an era. In addition to the ones you mentioned Manning and No Starch Press produce consistently excellent books as well.

[steve1977]

I‘m not sure if it’s really the pace of change or if many people just cannot focus on something for more than 10 or 15 minutes anymore. I‘m aware many people learn from YouTube videos and short tutorials, but I often find what they is quite shallow.