[benmanns]

It amazes me that people invest 20 hours in reading a book and complain about the price. If we assume roughly $40/hr for a $80k programmer, this is about $800 worth of time you're investing. Does a "hard" investment of $29 (4%) really make that big of a difference?

[shadowfiend]

I always use “let's assume roughly X/hour” as a joke.

You don't get paid for your spare time, except in opportunity cost. If someone applies 20 hours of their time at work, then yes, that's pocket change. If they apply 20 hours of their time at home, that's not time that they'd get paid for anyway, so the analogy is as foolish as the claim that every pirated copy of a movie would have been bought were it not for pirates.

Instead, I'm choosing between 20 hours of reading a book and maybe 20 hours of watching television (for example), which costs the electricity that the television consumes (since the cable or internet is paid for already). I suspect you'll find 20 hours of TV will cost less than $29. Or maybe it's 20 hours of running over the course of a couple of weeks. That's free, except maybe for the cost of the water to rehydrate. That's probably cheaper than $29, too. If you want to do the analysis in terms of how much it will earn you in the future, that's also valid I guess. But it complicates things, since it's hard to quantify how much the relaxation you get from watching TV or destressing from running is worth.

Let me just say, I don't think people should complain about the price of a good book when it's <$50-100 (depending on material). But the X/hour analogy only works if you're taking work time, and then many companies will often be willing to refund you that money anyway.

Last note: this isn't $29 for a book. It's $29 for a video course (though admittedly a non-HTML version of the book is thrown in at the end). The book itself is available for free, which is all that the OP was pointing out.

[flyinRyan]

>You don't get paid for your spare time, except in opportunity cost.

Your free time is clearly worth more than your wage/salary. If your free time were worth nothing, it would make no sense to have it. You have extra time you could get another job possibly paying up to your existing rate.

Don't like the thought of taking a second job doing what you're doing now? That's because your time is worth more to you than that cash, by definition.

[benmanns]

True, but by working for "roughly X/hour" you've established that the typical exchange rate for your time is roughly X/hour. If I were to ask you to do some work for my during your off time, I would have to pay about X ± X/2 depending on how you guarded your time. So what if someone only values their time at X/4? That's still $200 worth of spare time.

[shadowfiend]

That's fair, if we're continuing a monetary analogy (which I did do).

My spare time is worth happiness/distraction to me. Not money. I will confess that in that particular regard, I may differ from some, or perhaps even most, others.

[tjoff]

Doesn't make much sense anyway. So you make $40/hr, 40 hours a week. Well there is 168 hours in a week, subtract 40 from that and you have 128 hours those 40 hours must pay for.

As if that wasn't enough you have a lot of expenses that are flat-rate that you must pay regardless of how you spend your time (such as your rent).

All this is further assuming that your goal is to spend everything you make every month. Most probably put away some money to be able to buy a new car, travel etc. (or even just to be able to repair the car when it breaks)

[argv_empty]

by working for "roughly X/hour" you've established that the typical exchange rate for your time is roughly X/hour

Well, I've established that I'm willing to work that many hours for that rate. That doesn't mean I'm willing to work more hours at the same hourly rate. Most people I know value their spare time enough to expect a higher rate for working more time.

[__abc]

Damn. I've totally been ignoring the cost of sleeping. Son of a ....... I better update my personal finance models ... stat!

[johnchristopher]

Maybe it's more about the absolute value of something than its relative value. These days, 29$ is a lot for me. That is not a statement that the book is too expensive or that I don't give it the value it deserves.

For what it's worth I plan to read the online beta then print out a bought PDF for easier reading.

[TylerE]

That saying annoys me to no end. Sure, time has value, but just because something took $x hours does NOT mean it had an opportunity cost of $x*$rate.