I was in Dillons, the one opposite University College London, at the start of the week and what did I spy there?

There is now a bookshelf devoted to R (right, second from top) in the programming languages section. The shelf would be a lot fuller if O’Reilly did not have a complete section devoted to their books.

A trolley of C/C++ books was waiting to refill the shelves near the door.

Being adjacent to a university means that programming language books make up a much larger percentage of software books.

And there is O’Reilly in the corner with two stacks of shelves.

And yes, this is a big bookshop, the front is a complete block; computing/mathematics/physics/chemistry/engineering/medicine are in the basement. You can buy skeletons and stethoscopes in the medical section a few rooms down from computing; a stethoscope is useful for locating strange noises in computer cases without having to open them.

Readers a bit younger than me probably know this shop as Waterstones.