
Ask HN: Hour of reading articles in HN vs. 1 hour of reading books? - hamsterbooster
I&#x27;m debating about what would be a better of use of time between reading different blog posts in HN and other tech blogs&#x2F;news vs. reading books. Some tech blogs or research paper offers a lot of value and help me come up with new ideas and stay up to date. However, reading a book is also very helpful in understanding a particular topic in details.
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sushshshsh
Reading the best books on a topic is infinitely better than any time spent on
this site. There is nothing to learn here anymore, it's just news.

For example you'll never hear the words "Concurrent hashmap" or
"denormalization strategy" on this site, but you will in an interview.

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nextaccountic
On concurrent hash tables alone

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699176)
Dashmap: Fast concurrent HashMap for Rust, 4 months ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425954)
Java 8: New features in ConcurrentHashMap, January 2017

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052299)
Concurrent Hash Tables: Fast and General? (2019), 84 days ago (a real nice
article)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22541925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22541925)
Show HN: A Simple GPU Hash Table, 4 months ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14386333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14386333)
An Atomic Hash Table, May 2017 (I love this)

I suppose there's even more posts database denormalization.

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sushshshsh
I did a search on Algolia for "concurrent hashmap" with the search setting on
"All" and i got 16 pages of results.

I then did the same for "Justin Bieber" and got 94 pages of results, and I
also found an Algolia bug that was printing 97 pages as available but the last
three were blank.

This isn't very good news for anyone looking for "technology news" here but it
is actually quite good for people who are looking for "entrepreneurship news".

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adamlangsner
Both. If you want to learn about a specific subject / gain a new skill, then
books are the way to go. They tend to be more informationally dense and
comprehensive as compared to blog posts. Books tend to be of a higher quality
because of the economics involved. It's much harder to get a book published
than to create a blog, so there's more curation of what gets published which
is for your benefit; there's a higher standard for the content. Also, a lot of
blogs are used as marketing channels, trying to sell you something. this can
corrupt the information in the blog post because they're trying to sell you
something other than the blog post. With the book, you're paying for the book
so the incentives between you and the author are more aligned.

But, periodicals, blog posts and forums are good to keep apprised of new
things going on in the industry and they can be used to get new ideas like you
said and as jumping off points to read books. I often see something referenced
online, want to learn more and then buy a book on the subject. I like to think
of blog posts as more like op-eds than factual works.

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dhanna
HN is ok for passive discovery. But like others have said, it has a low SnR.

Textbooks and research papers are fantastic. It's important to actively read
and even do problems when it's really vital locking down knowledge.

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bfieidhbrjr
Books. The older the better, so they've passed the great filter of time.

~~~
nambit
I still have a book on programming in COBOL I need to dust off.

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shishy
Pick books.

signal to noise ratio here has gotten worse; not as worth anymore.

~~~
codepenguin
There's still some interesting stuff showing up on Show HN threads though.

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paulorlando
Depends on what your goals are of course. Entertainment, staying current etc.
But here's a rough heuristic: if the book has survived for a while, say a few
years, decades, or centuries, it's a good book. With limited time choose
something of quality rather than sorting through the noise. Or take the
opposite advice if you have different and just as valid goals.

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muzani
If you're not sure what books to read, dig through HN or ask. I've learned a
lot about productivity, procedural generation, and functional programming from
sources linked on HN. Sometimes there are clever quotes from good books.

But you still have to read the book. If you have a book to read, read the
book. If not, HN.

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h0p3
I cannot speak to your context well enough. If I only get to choose one, I
choose HN (or even carefully curated Plebbit). While there are radical dark
patterns in the attention economy with which to concern ourselves (and I'm
happy to talk shit about the nature and states of discourse available to
people), there are also many salient voices to hear within a recent and brief
timeframe that aren't usually as easy to find elsewhere (at least not with as
much signal-to-noise ratio).

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ilaksh
I think ideally both. Wish I could motivate myself to read more.

But I think that it really depends on which book and which blog post etc.

And usually to really understand something in detail you can't just read the
book. You have to do exercises to actually secure the knowledge or skill.

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scott31
I'd say go with HN. As a NodeJS developer, I found books to be lacking of the
latest JS frameworks and modules. Books have been obsoleted since the internet
was created 15 years ago.

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fortran77
As a Rust developer, it's very important for me to be on HN to make sure than
everyone knows about Rust, and to introduce Rust into every discussion about
other programming languages.

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barbarbar
This comment is great in every way I can think of.

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pseudonymousgun
Reading books > Reading articles on HN

Although i admit, HN is addictive.

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jppope
Well that Depends on the books and depends on the articles. What books are you
looking at and what blogs?

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sbmthakur
May I know specifically about which topics you are asking about?

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fortran77
But every hour of reading comments is time wasted.

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aaron695
If you are asking the question, books.

Once you can read a book and find mistakes or contradictions, HN.

