Tim O'Reilly is reporting that the sales of Ruby books have surpassed those of Perl books for the first time coming into Q3 2006 in numbers researched by Roger Magoulas, the director of O'Reilly Research. The data comes from Nielsen Bookscan's point of sales reports of the top 3000 computer books.
In a graph charting the market share of books for various 'fast development' languages (PHP, JavaScript, Perl, ActionScript, Python, and Ruby) between Q1 2003 and Q3 2006, O'Reilly demonstrates Ruby's rapid growth in the book market. With the line for Ruby not even leaving the X-axis until Q3 2004, it has shot above ActionScript, Python, and Perl quickly, with all of those languages experiencing a decline, as opposed to Ruby's growth. Since Q1 2006, only JavaScript and Ruby have grown in share, with JavaScript's growth roughly matching that of Ruby.
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See this Next Year
by Satish Talim,
Re: See this Next Year
by Bruce Tate,
Rubyisms in Rails kicks off Addison Wesley Professional Ruby Series
by Obie Fernandez,
See this Next Year
by Satish Talim,
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We should check this again next year, when I am sure that sales of Ruby books would surpass that of Java too!
Re: See this Next Year
by Bruce Tate,
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Re. Java/Ruby, the curves are certainly moving in opposite directions. Part of that is maturity. It's harder to find informaiton on Ruby. But book sales do say something about the growth of Ruby.
I should also put in a plug for the great folks at the Pragmatic Bookshelf. In many ways, they've started this market. They certainly have the lions share of the best authors locked down. That publisher is extremely well-positioned. I should disclose that I have books for both O'Reilly and Pragmatic.
Rubyisms in Rails kicks off Addison Wesley Professional Ruby Series
by Obie Fernandez,
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As series editor I'm proud to publicize the release of Jacob Harris' excellent little Ruby ebook, Rubyisms in Rails. Read the announcement from the author himself.