Ask HN: Are books worth it?

A lot of useful ideas are pretty timeless, and for learning fundamental technical content, a _good_ book is worlds better than a collection of blog posts and wikipedia pages. I remember when I was learning about quaternion math, I spent a few days googling around, but often different authors would use different notational conventions, or have different assumptions (e.g. whether the coordinate system is right or left-handed), so the math would be subtly different. Not to mention the ones that were just flat-out wrong.

So I went to the library, browsed through several books to find one that seemed most relevant, and ended up checking out "Quaternions and Rotation Sequences" from J Kuipers. Having a single well-thought-out book that walked from the basic background all the way through, with consistent notation, was way easier to follow than the scattershot collection I'd found online.

So in general I'd say if you're optimizing for the most up-to-date information on a subject that's changing quickly, looking online is probably your best bet. If you want to learn something more foundational and can find a good book about it, I'd definitely go for that.

+1 all the way. Online content is optimized not for quality but rather for clicks and interaction. As someone who grew up during the 90s the hope was that better quality would lead to more clicks. Clearly that’s not the case.

As a technical author myself, I can speak to the effort required to create a book versus a blog post. A book requires you to think holistically about a topic- building a comprehensive outline of what you intend to cover. Then you have to write. A lot. If you’re a good writer (for example take w. Richard Stevens) your text will include not just the information you wish to convey but context around that topic which is paramount to a deeper understanding of the topic.

Finally you go through a vetting process with other people in the industry. You’re challenged on your assertions, they help you correct errors, etc. Here the Wikipedia model may actually be superior as you are not limited in time or selection of experts for the tech editing phase.

In contrast, blog posts or tweets are optimized for speed and engagement. Superficial yet sensational topics are emphasized, context is lost due to lack of time and space to write, and the quality of the writing is highly variable.

Books are excellent and in fact I wrote my first tech book expressly because I found no good online resources for what I needed to know. I highly encourage people to read. It provides an excellent counterbalance to blogs and tweets.

everyone is commenting here as if he’s never read a book. he knows what it was like guys. and yes it is a waste of time. just read the plot summaries.

I read books for entertainment, even non fiction and technical. I don't believe that I have to spend every waking moment improving myself. If I benefit from books, it's because every once in a while, disparate things from disparate books click together in my brain. "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Thanks for this. I feel somewhat compelled to start reading again.