I joined "Computer Books Direct" in November last year as they were doing a
promotion with 3 pretty thick Visual Basic books for about UKP10.00**. Each
month the catalogue comes through, and I have noticed that there have been a
grand total of zero Ada books. There have also been very few (if any) of a
general software engineering nature. There have been loads of VB, C++ and Java
books, many of which have been "from the ground up" type of books that get you
started in programming in that language, but don't particularly emphasise best
software engineering practice. On the odd occasion there has been a book on UML.

My latest statement said that they were "getting seriously concerned that I
wasn't going to be able to satisfy my committment" to buy 3 books in my first
year of membership. This annoyed me as there's still oads of time for me to do
this, so I decided to point this out by email. I took the opportunity to point
out to them that I would be more likely to buy books if they were of more use to
me - specifically if they were on Ada or Software Engineering in general.

I haven't had a response from them on that one yet but, to be honest, I have
found the situation wrt Ada books in particular to be pretty dire in local
bookshops.

I would guess that university bookshops are probably the only places that are
going to bother actually stocking Ada books, and even then only the ones that
supply students who learn Ada during their courses.

What I would like to see is a book on programming Windows with Ada. Has anyone
written one?

John

** Just a note - if anyone who has already bought "Using Visual Basic" published
by Que, it is worth noting that they also publish a book called "Practical
Visual Basic" by the same authors which, funnily enough, is identical in
content! I had "Using" and got "Practical" via Computer Books Direct.
Unfortunately it wasn't until later (after the time had expired when I could
send them back) that I noticed they were basically (no pun intended) the same
book!