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Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

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Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#11

Post by ppseafield »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #7
minkles wrote: post #2

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructio…

Many are outdated by the time they hit the press. I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. Typesetting is awful too, as you mentioned. A single paragraph for something dead simple is spread over multiple pages. Nothing against such authors; its fruitless to hit a moving target. Books on programming languages…

Programming books are definitely becoming more hit or miss, as the volume of books has increased dramatically in the last 10-15 years. There are still great books, but there are a lot more bad ones out there. There's a lot more software out there, and a lot more people learning about it.

I had a horrible experience with Packt. I had subscribed andwas in the middle of reading a book. The book suddenly became unavailable, so I created a ticket. They threw a few tokens at me, and asked if they could just close the ticket, even though there was no mention of whether the book was going to be available again.

Then weeks later they signed me up for six(!) separate mailing lists without asking me, one for each tag I had flagged as interested.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#12

Post by vsuperpower2021 »

jll29 wrote: post #6

Some counter-examples: - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - C Interfaces and Implementations - Design Patterns - Compilers: Principles, Practice and Tools Each of these should make you go "a-ha!", in its own way.

Design Patterns is your suggestion of a book that isn't shit? Even the list of "a-ha" books has random landmines tossed in.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#13

Post by geph2021 »

minkles wrote: post #2

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructio…

That's exactly the author's point:

  Most programming books suck.
Yet he has some recommendations:

   But I do have this call to arms: my top five programming books every working programmer should own – and read.
They are:

  Code Complete 2 [1]

  Don't Make Me Think [2]

  Peopleware [3]

  Pragmatic Programmer [4]

  Facts and Fallacies [5]
1 - https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/codihorr-...

2 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321965515/codihorr-2...

3 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/codihorr-2...

4 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/codihorr-2...

5 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321117425/codihorr-2...

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#14

Post by larve »

I actually find the quality of programming books to have starkly increased in the last decade. I find a lot of manning's and o'reilly's release to have a pretty long shelf-life.

For example, I really enjoyed and often go back to:

- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/building-event-driven-m...

- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensiv...

- https://www.manning.com/books/100-go-mistakes-and-how-to-avo...

- https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Brendan-Gregg/dp/...

And more recently:

- https://www.manning.com/books/build-a-large-language-model-f...

- https://www.manning.com/books/the-creative-programmer

- https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain

- https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Software-Addison-Wesley...

I also find books about specific technologies that indeed run the risk of being deprecated after a few years to be useful too

- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/networking-and-kubernet...

- https://www.brendangregg.com/bpf-performance-tools-book.html

Furthermore, nothing keeps you from reading books about topics peripheral to computer science, say to keep up with the general vibes:

- https://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Machine-Learning-Introd...

- https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Foundations-Christopher...

- https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Abstraction-Exploration-Category-...

I find that all of these contribute significantly to my growth as an engineer.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#15

Post by smusamashah »

" The Design of Everyday Things" is a great non-programming book that programmers should read. It tells you why/how you should make things more usable for your users. If you find yourself failing to use something properly, it's not you being stupid, it's the design.

Design of doors is famously known example from this book.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#16

Post by Suppafly »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #7
minkles wrote: post #2

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructio…

Many are outdated by the time they hit the press. I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. Typesetting is awful too, as you mentioned. A single paragraph for something dead simple is spread over multiple pages. Nothing against such authors; its fruitless to hit a moving target. Books on programming languages…

>Nothing against such authors;

I have something against them. It's often apparent that many of them are professional programming book authors that are learning the language as they are writing the book instead of being professional programmers with some skills in the language that are writing a book. I don't want to learn along with another unskilled person, I want to learn from someone that has enough familiarity to not use features incorrectly and to mention potential hangups. Hell a lot of these books read like they are written by someone that is new to programming altogether, not just someone that is relatively new to the language.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#17

Post by Suppafly »

minkles wrote: post #5
latexr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. That’s consistent with the first reason given in the article: > I lay part of the blame squarely at the feet of the technical book publishing industry: > Most programming books suck. The barrier to being a book author, as near as I can tell, is virtually nonexistent. The signal to noise of book publishing is arg…

The problem is that they're written by developers. And when I say developers I mean developers, not engineers or authors. Everything is about a sausage factory, nothing more. You don't learn stuff other than copying and mimicry. And some of it is absolute monkey excrement. But when you don't know better it feels like you are learning something good. I am considering writing a bad programming book on purpose. I will c…

Nah, the worst ones are the ones written by authors, but who aren't developers. Especially the ones that are authors that just write a book for every new trendy language but never get to the point of actually using those languages themselves.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#18

Post by ghaff »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #7
minkles wrote: post #2

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructio…

Many are outdated by the time they hit the press. I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. Typesetting is awful too, as you mentioned. A single paragraph for something dead simple is spread over multiple pages. Nothing against such authors; its fruitless to hit a moving target. Books on programming languages…

>Many are outdated by the time they hit the press.

Quite a while back, I was contacted by Wiley about writing an OpenStack book. I wasn't the right person to write it anyway. But even if I were, by the time the book hit the shelves, OpenStack would almost certainly have moved on a good two versions.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#19

Post by jonbodner »

latexr wrote: post #3
minkles wrote: post #2

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructio…

> I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. That’s consistent with the first reason given in the article: > I lay part of the blame squarely at the feet of the technical book publishing industry: > Most programming books suck. The barrier to being a book author, as near as I can tell, is virtually nonexistent. The signal to noise of book publishing is arg…

I’m the author of Learning Go from O’Reilly, so I might be a bit biased.

What I’ve found is that different publishers put different amount of effort into producing good content. O’Reilly is almost always excellent. Others are less so.

It’s hard to find a dev who is willing to invest a year of their life to write a book that is likely to make almost no money. It’s doubly hard to find devs who write well.

Given these filters, two or three good programming books a year sounds pretty great.

Re: Programmers Don't Read Books – But You Should (2008)

#20

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

biofox wrote: post #9
tdeck wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. This says more about React than it does about the publisher.

Churn in the software world is out of control, and I have no idea why we accept it.

It's funny because at the end of the day it's still all just instructions on a CPU. Computers essentially haven't changed in half a century. What the biggest change between then and now? Multi-core processors?
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