深夜杂感
《软件调试》面世后，得到了很多读者的好评，这是我写作这本书得到的最大快乐和收获。但是最近在China-pub网站上，却有人不断的挑剔，首先是批评定价高。我尝试做了几次解释，但是无济于事，于是决定不予理睬，省下时间做些更有意义的事。
但是今晚我意外的看到，有人在批评David所写的序言，指责David“没怎么看的书也作序推荐”，而且对David使用了很粗劣的语言。看了这样的评论后，我真的很气愤。思考良久，做了如下回复：
“David是在看了详细的英文目录和简介后写了上面的短评。他写的都是客观的事实（包括覆盖面、篇章结构、深度等在详细的三级目录中都是可以看得出的呀）和他的感受。我和David的交往并不很多，在他看了书的初步框架后，他就对书的内容很感兴趣，乐意为这本书写序，今年4月书即将完成，我又给他写信时，另外意外的是，他竟然说在他的Outlook里已经有了一个reminder。我想他这样的名人能动笔主要是因为这本书的主题吸引了他。凭借他的资历，他早已认识到了调试的重要性。他对自己感兴趣的东西说几句话何过之有？至于这本书到底怎么样，你完全可以自己来判断，可以看样章，也可以参考其他读者的讨论（http://advdbg.org/forums/75/ShowForum.aspx）。David是国际知名的操作系统专家，备受世界各地技术人员的尊重，不知你资历如何，竟对他出言不逊？难道他不懂中文，你就可以轻易使用中文的词汇来骂他么？语种的差异其实很多时候并不是障碍，真诚和至善很容易打破这个障碍，同时这个障碍也遮不住低俗和丑恶。”
我在想，发此评论的人是出于何种目的？是确实想买书么？多半不是。更可能的是出于一种不成熟的“发泄”。或者是出于一种特殊的“印度青蛙”心理。
在前几天的OSR新闻组中，发生了一件也颇令人深思的事情。一个印度工程师在询问了WinDBG扩展的一个问题后，请大家推荐一本这方面的好书，EMAIL的标题是Need suggestion on good book for windbg extension。于是便有美国人向他推荐了AWD（Advanced Windows Debugging），并指出了有关的章节。印度工程师看到这个推荐后便回复说，“Will try to find this particular chapter if available on Net.（将努力寻找这特定的一章——如果网络上有）”。
美国人看到这个回复后，马上写到：
So what you are saying is you only want it if you can have it for free.
This is the one and only book on windbg, and the author worked hard to make this a great book.
I hope your customers value your time more than that.
另一个经常在OSR新闻组活动的大牛级人物也说：
1. Please buy the book.（请买这本书，而不是用其他方法）
2. Two basic reasons:
a. it largely hinds the ugliness of the DbgEng 'let's pretend it's COM since all kernel programmer's love COM.' interface. Not
uncommonly, you need to do something that the classes don't provide, it gets rid of the redundant stuff, not that it the grand
scheme of things it's all that onerous to begin with, but it does make things a lot more readable, as long you're OK with not seeing
the boilerplate.
b. it includes a few things for you as well - command line parsing (not my first choice of implementation, but it's still nice to
have); capturing of output; hides the (almost undocumented) details of IDebugEvents; some others
For me, (a) is much more important - it just makes the whole thing more readable, at least to my eyes. (b) is nice, but either way
works.
印度工程师看到后，写了一封很长的EMAIL，解释说自己并不是不买，而是积极去买了，但是买不到，希望网上有可以快些下载到。很快，另一个人给出了销售电子版本的网址，并说：
You can download a PDF version of the book from the URL below, if you don't wanna get into that shop+distributor wait loop. You need to buy it.
最后，最先推荐AWD的Jim说了几句话，我很有同感：
Ok, sorry if I a made a bad assumption.
Most people don't realize that now a days you really don't make much on a technical book.
This book is not just a cut and paste of odd helps and msdn pages. It is very well written.
Here in the US, tech books (unless you want a VB.NET book) for the most part must be ordered.
To be honest, I bought the book with no identified need, but it has turned that just one chapter (any one chapter) was well worth the cost.
Few well written tech books are published, and when one is I want to support the authors.
是啊，作者在技术书籍上赚不到什么，认真写的技术书很少，他们需要支持。