
Ask HN: Do you still buy/read technical books? - gcatalfamo
If you decide to learn new skills (e.g python) or about a subject (e.g. ML) do you still rely on technical books for it?<p>I find myself looking more and more for alternative sources, but it could be just me, not finding a page of code written in a book all that useful.<p>Note: this is not about the quality of the content, but about the appropriateness of the <i>medium</i> nowadays.
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itamarst
Books are often the only way to get a really good big picture overview of a
subject, because of their scale and editorial process.

* Blog posts tend to be too short, so you only get some details or a really vague outline. A book can do both big picture and relevant details.

* Documentation is usually written by someone who knows the system too well, so too often it leaves out a lot of things that the author thinks are obvious but aren't obvious to readers.

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danielvf
Yes, I still occasionally buy tech books, but only for kicking off learning a
new skill. I can read a book in an evening and get the big picture of how
things work as well as the underlying philosophy of how the small pieces work.
Hopefully I've also gotten at least one person's view of the best practices
for that tech.

After that I try to build something. When I'm done with the first play project
I rarely return to the book.

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shakna
For theory, absolutely.

Its still hard to beat the Dragon books for compiler theory, and SICP, Lisp In
Small Pieces and others are still some of the best for PLT.

New skills tends to be different, because the technology is new, theoretical
underpinnings haven't been researched well enough to be expanded out into a
book.

I'd never get a book on jQuery, because I don't need the theoretical
underpinning, just the documentation. A basic understanding of the
implementation is enough.

However, I would pick up a book on Dot, the Typed Calculus being explored with
Scala in the Dotty compiler. Because I'd be learning the mathematics of type
safety, and using types to more effeciently generate machine code. However,
learning to use Scala would be incidental to that experience.

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tedmiston
I use technical books as a medium much different than a quickstart or tutorial
for a library / framework / etc.

Last year I bought a Safari Books Online Subscription [1]. It's something like
~$400 but usually goes half price on Black Friday. The core is virtually every
O'Reilly book and many from other technical publishers too.

I've bought a couple technical eBooks or paperbacks this year, but for the
most part this subscription has replaced that. It's also nice to not
accumulate physical clutter for when 2+ years from now that book about hot
JavaScript frameworks today will be ancient.

[1]: [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/)

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jtcond13
Books are most useful for matters that don't change very much, which would
probably include most academic subjects. Programming language books are good
when they're more general in nature (e.g. John Resig's JS book) but are less
useful when learning, say, a specific library. In the latter case, online
materials seem to be a better guide.

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amerkhalid
Not as often but I still buy technical books. Last book I bought was, Head
First Android.

I enjoy reading books but most technical books I skim through in a couple of
days. However, that gives me enough big picture ideas that when I am actually
working on a problem, I know what keywords to type in Google.

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tedmiston
I feel like a lot of people don't take the Head First series seriously, but
honestly I'm a fan.

Sure they are pretty light and big picture but I've come to realize I enjoy
building that foundation and figuring out the details myself rather than
having an exhaustive tome tell me everything.

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jetti
I rely on technical books on certain subjects. For instance, I would get a
technical book on compiler design patterns because those are pretty timeless.
On the other hand, I have stopped buying books that are new programming
language specific because the languages tend to change and make the book
obsolete. I've experienced this with a RoR/Ruby book I bought that wouldn't
even work with the newest version of RoR at the time. The book was useless.

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eb0la
I still read tech books but not in paper since last summer when I signed up to
Safari Books Online.

I usually start building new skills with MOOCs, which also help me discover
books that will help me later as a reference after the course ends. In this
case I prefer paper books, not online ones.

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PaulHoule
I buy them in PDF form and read them when I do cardio at the gym.

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tedmiston
Tried this once and my eyes can't handle trying to read while moving. Maybe
it's the astigmatism.

~~~
colig
I find the recumbent bicycle is the steadiest way to do reading and cardio at
the same time.

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douche
All the time. Not particularly for a specific technology, especially in fast-
moving domains like web dev, but for more broad practice and theory, the
concepts are more timeless. Think Code Complete, or The Art of Unit Testing,
or Working Effectively with Legacy Code, or Peopleware.

I'm also a fan of the Syncfusion Succinctly series[1]. They are short, quick
overviews of a particular tech, that you can pretty easily go through in a
evening and make a good jumping off point for digging deeper.

[1]
[https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks](https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks)

~~~
tedmiston
Two more similar ones that come to mind are _The Pragmatic Programmer_ [1] and
_Pragmatic Thinking and Learning_ [2].

[1]: [https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-
programmer](https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer)

[2]: [https://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-
learn...](https://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)

