Ask HN: How do you read programming books?

If the goal is to improve as a programmer and books being the medium I choose books that doesn't necessarily have an obvious link to programming but benefit my thinking around it. Books on design, architecture, media and education being my favourite. I don't follow any particular techniques but have grown into some habits (reading ~50 books a year). I read multiple books at the same time (~3-4), usually very different in style/topic, alternating between them. This way I never get bored. The new books I choose for reading has to spark some excitement/passion in me, otherwise I'm never going to finish it. It could be as simple as some concept in a book that triggers curiosity, then I just follow the reference/bibliography and further do some quick research (amazon/goodreads) to see whether it looks like a promising book.

Reading about product design will make you a better software designer.. Reading about media will make you see how your application fits in a bigger picture.. ..and so on.

I hope you're not implying that I don't have good presentation or don't teach well! I'd obviously disagree with that. And I definitely think that the Head First books mentioned by others in their responses do a great job with both.

But I notice that you said "suboptimal," and then made this point:

> - page 1: the clipart of the man and woman and the thought bubbles do not reward the user with quality knowledge in relation to the space they take up

I recommend against judging the "optimality" of a book based on the amount of information that it packs into the smallest amount of space. Maybe instead of the amount of space taken up by the teaching, consider using the amount of time and effort required by the reader. Pages are cheap, especially in an electronic medium. A page like the one you mentioned is really quick to read and absorb.

Also:

> - page 19: the clipart of the tourist with the arrows and thought bubble does not actually teach a networking concept

I haven't read Head First Networking, and I don't know the authors, Al Anderson or Ryan Benedetti. But from a quick read, it's clear that that picture is part of a larger story (in this case, about tourists and an airline) that the authors are using as a teaching tool. Stories are a very effective teaching tool.

This should make sense if you think about it. Think about the last textbook that you read. Can you remember the major points that it made, in order? You might be able to, but most people probably can't do it accurately. Now think about the last movie you watched. It's much more likely that you can remember most or all of the major plot points and in the right order, because they're part of a consistent story.

Our brains are wired to remember stories, just like they're wired to remember places, faces, and emotions. The Head First books use stories to take advantage of this effect, not dissimilar to how people use memory palaces (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395739) to improve their recall.

Yes, telling stories (especially visually) takes a lot of page space. But readers absorb them quickly -- in my experience, it's a very efficient and effective way of teaching. The Head First books that I've read (and hopefully the ones that I've written!) do a great job of that.