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Caught red-handed...

Amazing. My book has only been out for a couple months and someone has the audacity to ask me directly if they can pirate it. Here's the message I received:

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hi,
i m new to this group...
May i know , from where i can get the following books
for free ?
Is there any site , from where i can download ?

Thanks in advance
Manish

>"Accelerated C++" by Koenig and Moo
> "Safe C++ Design Principles" by Thomas Hruska
> "The C++ Standard Library" by Nicolai Josuttis
> "Effective C++" by Scott Meyers
> "More Effective C++" by Scott Meyers
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Basically, this person stuck their hand in the cookie jar while I was already getting a cookie. Figuratively speaking. I don't think it gets any more blunt than that.

The thing is, I am a fairly lenient person. If someone can't afford my book "Safe C++ Design Principles", then they need to e-mail me and propose a counter-offer. Writing Safe C++ code is something every college professor should be teaching and every student should be learning. Most of the problems today in software stem from the fact that only 1 out of every 1000 programmers actually has a clue on how to write software. The rest are copy-and-paste artists. While imitation is the best form of flattery just about anywhere else, it doesn't work when designing a software package.

Every C++ developer desperately needs my book. I don't know how to emphasize this except to put a $45 price tag on the book and keep telling programmers how simple their lives would be if they owned a copy. Programmers have their head stuck in how complex writing code is. I follow every concept presented in "Safe C++ Design Principles" and I find software design to be simple and straight-forward. Writing software in C++ is easy. The disbelief that writing C++ can be easy is what seems to drive people away from buying the book. But that's what the book does - it cuts through the, to use a technical term, "crap" of whatever you've learned and reveals the simplicity that can exist. And simple is beautiful. Simple, in this case, even offers powerful functionality.

And yet, people can't wrap their heads around the fact that the $45 price tag is simply there to put a mental level of importance. If the price were $20, that would cheapen the knowledge contained within to the level of a nickle-and-dime romance novel. Personally, I would pay $45 if I knew I could save myself 6-10 years of effort. Many of the principles found in the book are based on tidbits of knowledge that form part of my discoveries over the past 17 years of programming. Only in the past 4 years have I discovered what it means to be a software developer. And I pass that knowledge on to anyone willing to shell out a measly $45. In the grand scheme of things, $45 is nothing.

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