Yes, do buy and do read, though maybe pickier than before. Also, often just going with the e-book version of things for practical/portability reasons, but not all the time.
I just purchased Jon Gjengset's "Rust for Rustaceans", since most online documentation I've found on Rust assumes you don't understand or just don't care about how computers actually work.
that summarizes how rust developers think. we made a “better” language so we don’t need to know how all this underlying stuff works. which is why rust should never be allowed in the linux kernel source tree.
For programming, no. Any programming question I’ve had in the last 15 years has been answered with a Google search, and any new language/technology I’ve picked up has been learned from online articles. Any programming books I still have are language reference manuals, which I keep purely for nostalgia. These too are all online these days.
For math/algorithms, yes. There are still many topics that do not have good online articles but are covered at length in textbooks. These topics are usually covered in journal articles too, but at a much more terse level than a textbook chapter.
Generally my answer also, but I do still sometimes buy programming books, as sometimes I find the online documentation inadequate for me to understand something.
One example: probably contrary to a lot of people on HN, I haven't done a whole lot of web programming, and a few years ago got involved in a project that touched on Angular, Node, VueJS, etc. I found reading (parts of) a few real books to be helpful in getting up to speed in general understanding, but now am back to just using web resources.
I generally find everything that I need online. Most of the languages I've learned recently have had their 'bible' books either online or included with the language tooling.
I used to but it seems things move too fast now, my latest Python book was outdated in 5 years, so I'd highly recommend reading online documentation instead
If you want well researched content with working code along with the fact that a book in not connected to the internet(yet, smart book anyone?) it's still worth it.
Seriously, there's just random angry blog posts. You can't get the equivalent of a 300 page book teaching you programming concepts from the @*#& on the Internet.
Yes. Technical books are an opportunity to have a coherent, well-edited and deep dive into some topic, at a pace I can manage myself. I’d say that I’m not likely to use reference manuals or “cookbooks” like I did in the 90s or 00s, but there’s no replacement for the depth of a good book.
Of course, what else can I put on my book shelves to impress my managers? They love books from Martin Fowler, Bob Martin, etc.. Basically, anything useless but good sound bite.
I'd say that the technical books are a bit of a stretch, as most things in tech and entropy of their usefulness like apps over time, break.
I might suggest something more above the free of technology and more in the design of software. Ideas that last are the ones around approaches to design vs. actually technology that they are implemented with.
My co-worker (a younger version of me, actually and way smarter is wise beyond his years) gave me this book - which is as old as my career and has relevance on how we design software at my day job.
I've had that on my 'to buy' list for too long. In such a rapidly changing field like computing, books have to be really special to reach the 'classic' accolade.
I've adopted the same philosophy with technical books as with other types of books: I'll buy and keep the "classics" around, but anything that is more fleeting I'll borrow from the library, conduct a web search for the info, or buy digitally.
At the beginning of diving into a topic area or when I want to go very deep on a subject.
Books tend to have good comprehensive overviews of an area/technology, whereas most online tutorials are very shallow, even if more current.
On the flip side, when I need /deep/ understanding it’s almost always a combination of a book on the topic to fill in holes I missed, the docs, and live repos if available.
If it’s just for day to day use, or a technology I’m only using in passing - no.
I do vet the authors though. A lot of trash is published.
That's where I do the majority of my reading (for technical books) these days. It's great, especially for the "I want to learn $LANG/$FRAMEWORK but I know the particular book will be outdated in 2 years or irrelevant to my future work." Unless I really like the language, I probably won't be buying the book (of course, if my employer will then I'll take a hard copy).
Somewhat… I find it hard to sit down and read technical especially if it’s dense… I used to buy them for reference as needed but Google has made it almost obsolete now. Technology is also changing so fast now - most technical books I bought a few years ago are mostly obsolete now - so I end up googling anyhow.
Here an idea that would make technical books relevant again in the age of blogs and Google: I think technical books needs to be live content (I don’t mean course like) - you buy a book and get an online subscription to it (almost like an ebook) but live in a sense that you get access to subsequent editions and updates examples etc.
Yes, but I started reading recently. I got introduced to Eli Bendersky’s blog[0] and when I went through his reading summary & book reviews; I got motivated enough to start reading!
Yes. Although instead of buying O'Reilly books, I'm usually buying paper/ebook bundles from No Starch Press these days.
If I'm learning tough new concepts, I usually start off with a good YouTube video and then fill it out with books. For whatever reason, although I read a lot of books, that seems to work better these days.
Yes, I usually have a few (technical/non-technical) books laying around the house and enjoy randomly reading a few pages here and there. But I don't really make a point of reading them unless there is another motivation such as book club.
Yes. Mostly in digital form (O'Reilly Safari or whatever it's called now, though I don't know if I can heartily recommend, quality of titles has seemed to diminish in the offerings).
Occasionally will spring for a hardcopy book form.
True, most are outdated fairly quickly and few have long lasting value beyond 1-2 years. But when done right, nothing is better than a good text to guide you from beginner to intermediate, or intermediate to advanced. I've tried watching video but it just doesn't seem like an efficient mode (for most video courses, there are exceptions and wonderful video courses).
Absolutely. Comprehensive deep dive where an editor has made the text coherent, the code has been reasonably tested and several technical reviewers have read through the content and provided feedback before it went to print.
I used to purchase many physical technical books, but now only keep a select few (which is still probably a good 200+ books) on my shelves, mostly the classics, e.g. GPU gems, game programming gems, numerical recipes, etc. Now I pick up digital versions of the books and make sure I can get them in PDF format. I have a few of the Fujitsu Quadernos for reading books these days, which makes a huge difference to trying to read on a smaller tablet.
Generally I avoid picking up books on "fast moving topics" e.g. the latest web framework de jeur that has gone through 19 versions since the author started writing the book and when I eventually purchase it.
46 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 95.4 ms ] threadFor math/algorithms, yes. There are still many topics that do not have good online articles but are covered at length in textbooks. These topics are usually covered in journal articles too, but at a much more terse level than a textbook chapter.
One example: probably contrary to a lot of people on HN, I haven't done a whole lot of web programming, and a few years ago got involved in a project that touched on Angular, Node, VueJS, etc. I found reading (parts of) a few real books to be helpful in getting up to speed in general understanding, but now am back to just using web resources.
Ironically, I go through documentation/stackoverflow/etc most of the time :)
I might suggest something more above the free of technology and more in the design of software. Ideas that last are the ones around approaches to design vs. actually technology that they are implemented with.
My co-worker (a younger version of me, actually and way smarter is wise beyond his years) gave me this book - which is as old as my career and has relevance on how we design software at my day job.
https://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling-Complex...
Books tend to have good comprehensive overviews of an area/technology, whereas most online tutorials are very shallow, even if more current.
On the flip side, when I need /deep/ understanding it’s almost always a combination of a book on the topic to fill in holes I missed, the docs, and live repos if available.
If it’s just for day to day use, or a technology I’m only using in passing - no.
I do vet the authors though. A lot of trash is published.
https://www.oreilly.com
Here an idea that would make technical books relevant again in the age of blogs and Google: I think technical books needs to be live content (I don’t mean course like) - you buy a book and get an online subscription to it (almost like an ebook) but live in a sense that you get access to subsequent editions and updates examples etc.
[0]: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/tag/book-reviews
And, how did it go?
I have my own website where I focus to help developers find what book to read based on a roadmap to be a master craftsman.
https://www.programmingbooks.dev
If I'm learning tough new concepts, I usually start off with a good YouTube video and then fill it out with books. For whatever reason, although I read a lot of books, that seems to work better these days.
Occasionally will spring for a hardcopy book form.
True, most are outdated fairly quickly and few have long lasting value beyond 1-2 years. But when done right, nothing is better than a good text to guide you from beginner to intermediate, or intermediate to advanced. I've tried watching video but it just doesn't seem like an efficient mode (for most video courses, there are exceptions and wonderful video courses).
I used to purchase many physical technical books, but now only keep a select few (which is still probably a good 200+ books) on my shelves, mostly the classics, e.g. GPU gems, game programming gems, numerical recipes, etc. Now I pick up digital versions of the books and make sure I can get them in PDF format. I have a few of the Fujitsu Quadernos for reading books these days, which makes a huge difference to trying to read on a smaller tablet.
Generally I avoid picking up books on "fast moving topics" e.g. the latest web framework de jeur that has gone through 19 versions since the author started writing the book and when I eventually purchase it.