The computer book market as a tech trend indicator

Tim O’Reilly recently published a truly insightful analysis of the computer book market. Looking at the second quarter 06 computer books market provides clues what is hot.

Obviously the real-world distribution of computer languages cannot be determined from book sales, on the other hand this is a true indicator what is coming up. Looking at the computer language distribution (treemap): The big winners this time are C#, .NET Languages, JavaScript and Ruby. NET  plus C# combined has also overtaken Java. On the web side of things, Web 2.0 and AJAX-related technologies are the hot thing.  Looking at the database section (treemap), SQL Server is going strong with doubled book sales thanks to SQL Server 2005.

Viewing web technologies only (treemap), ASP(.NET) and AJAX are huge (note: AJAX is marked as 0% growth because the category did not exist a year ago)

Amusing: Readers of O’Reilly’s blog comment on his own influence on the next “big thing” on the computer book sector.