"If you're a contractor billing at market rates in SF, $30 is one-third to one-fifth of a single hour's income."
The issue is that the overwhelming majority of technical people don't live in SF, nor will they ever earn SF rates.
It's absurd that people insist on projecting the economic situation of an incomprehensibly small subset of programmers that are lucky enough to reside in a hot market onto the entire cohort of developers. Most people don't make $100 per hour, and even if they do, other aspects of life are quite expensive (car, house, school). I don't understand why people can't comprehend that some people make modest salaries or don't have limitless disposable income.
$30 isn't necessarily the world (and many people will certainly receive positive value), but it's still a hefty expense that requires one to gauge value. Asserting that someone is wrong to be hesitant about buying the book is presumptuous.
People buy things based on cost, and strive to preserve their money and maximize value. What is so upsetting about that?
@ruswick I agree. You said what I was attempting to say with a great deal more clarity.
Nearly $40 is a lot for an unknown quantity for someone like me who is convinced that Meteor is a big deal, but who is also learning web development from the ground-up. And yes, I should probably start with something a little easier for a beginner to rap their head around.
But there really are people like me out there who are interested in learning Meteor for whom $39 (or $30) represents a lot of money. I'm a grad student, working part-time for $14/hour, with a homemaker wife and baby. My allowance, when I can get it, is $50 a month. Yep, that's how some of us roll.
So maybe sharing that sheds some light on how and why someone (like me) might be price sensitive--even when it seems ridiculous to others who make a LOT more money.
That said, after getting the expense approved by my wife, I did actually take advantage of the $30 launch list price and am currently working my way through the book. The first 28 pages have been worthwhile. I like that, similar to the Hartl Rails Tutorial, it attempts to cover the whole development life cyle including deploying locally, to Meteor, to Heroku, and to EC2, etc. For beginners like me who really crave learning about the whole process, this is a boon.
The issue is that the overwhelming majority of technical people don't live in SF, nor will they ever earn SF rates.
It's absurd that people insist on projecting the economic situation of an incomprehensibly small subset of programmers that are lucky enough to reside in a hot market onto the entire cohort of developers. Most people don't make $100 per hour, and even if they do, other aspects of life are quite expensive (car, house, school). I don't understand why people can't comprehend that some people make modest salaries or don't have limitless disposable income.
$30 isn't necessarily the world (and many people will certainly receive positive value), but it's still a hefty expense that requires one to gauge value. Asserting that someone is wrong to be hesitant about buying the book is presumptuous.
People buy things based on cost, and strive to preserve their money and maximize value. What is so upsetting about that?