Waterstones bookshop in Piccadilly, London, claims to be the largest in Europe – it is in an old department store, Simpson’s of Piccadilly and is a pleasant place to spend some time.

Today I nipped in after a work related meeting and, as usual, had a quick look at the computer books – only to discover there are really nothing more than two shelving units left of them in the shop – about a quarter of the shelf space when I was last in there (in the summer I’d guess).

The books that were left showed a heavy bias towards “computing for beginners” and one can only suppose that the number of chance purchases of books on C, C++ or Javascript has dwindled to close to nothing: and I suppose I buy all my computer books online too.

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