I recently bought "Code" so it can be discovered by my children when they are older.
This is the only reason I ordered a hardcopy.
Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#12Only ebooks. But books themselves, the good ones, are a really useful resource that I still haven't been able to replace despite the availability of many other free resources like blogs and video tutorials.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#13I like to buy technical books. There's some inexplicable satisfaction from holding them, and I like the way they decorate my house on a bookshelf.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#14I still buy physical books, I just find them easier to read when I really want to concentrate and take the material in.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#15I’ll generally download a local copy of the language spec and the standard library docs. Rust’s borrow checker aside, most mainline programming languages have enough in common it’s usually all I need. Google’s there when I need more.
Elixir and forth were the big exceptions.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#16For tech books I prefer the PDF version on a tablet. Search, and clickable links. Taught myself SQL, regex, sed and awk, and a few others that way. Recently found out I learn a lot watching demos on YouTube which I dismissed before. I do like a physical book for deep studying though.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#17I generally prefer physical Books but for tech, I prefer online version (ideally HTML or PDF). The reason is that it is easier to follow along especially if I am writing code and even copy/paste snippets if the book has those. Best tech books for me are those that are dead simple HTML/CSS with no JS so that I can just run it directly in browser without a server.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#18I’ll generally download a local copy of the language spec and the standard library docs. Rust’s borrow checker aside, most mainline programming languages have enough in common it’s usually all I need. Google’s there when I need more. Elixir and forth were the big exceptions.
What did you do for them?
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#19Yes. This year I bought books on Elm and Haskell.
I also read article and watch related conferences
Re: Ask HN: Do you still buy physical tech books like “Learn Rust” or “Learn Go”?
#20I've switched completely to ebook, but there are downsides.
First is that the ebook annotation is clunkier than physical annotation, for various reasons (zooming, palm detection etc.).
In addition to finding the right pdf annotator, one needs to find the right tablet (I choose a tablet because I like colors and smooth movement); the vast majority of the tablets are geared towards video consumption, and they have the 16:9 form factor (which is terrible for ebooks reading).
The second is that once one find the most convenient pdf annotator, they will need to get into the ridicolous practice of buying ebooks, but then actually annotate pirated copies (otherwise, with DRM, one is bound to the producer's reader).
Nonetheless, I personally find digital reading overall preferrable over the physical counterpart. The experience of reading Cracking the coding interview, after many years of ebooks, was odd and not so comfortable.