HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is there value in reading programming books?

3 points by moretai ↗ HN
Like O'Reilly books, books given to use in college classes, etc. Even something renowned like Pragmatic Programmer, is that something worth checking out?

Are there anything that young programmers should be doing besides programming? Reading code is something thrown out a lot.

1 comment

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 14.4 ms ] thread
[dead] grawprog
I've read a bunch of different programming books over the years. Some were more helpful than others. I personally found programming books to be most helpful if I was trying to learn a specific language and it happened to have a particularly good reference book. The only two I read all the way through from start to finish were Programming in D and Programming in Lua. Pretty much any other programming book I've read I've only used the parts I needed and didn't really look at the rest.