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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#41

Post by Gigachad »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #2

It's a shame because to guide a coding agent, you need to have the right grammar and vocabulary to describe what you want and how you want it to be built. Junior devs should read not because they need to know how to write the code, but they need to know the vocabulary and the grammar to guide the agents.

At work we had a dispute over if AI should be allowed in the technical interview, we resolved it by both running an AI allowed and not allowed interview. Something interesting we found is that every candidate either passed or failed both. People who could not program manually without AI were not able to get the agent to complete the tasks either.

I've seen people type questions in to the LLM and get the answer they asked for but not the one they needed/wanted because they didn't have the correct terminology.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#42

Post by Grokify »

Gigachad wrote: post #36
DANmode wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too early to call, but that is a crazy stat. Wow.

Too early to call? It's hit rock bottom. I've never seen a major site die so completely before.

Digg was a major site that had a surprisingly fast turn of events. There are some good lessons from that.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#44

Post by adfm »

This post feels misleading or possibly just nostalgic. The books referenced still exist because the people creating the technology are still writing them. They're also creating video and attending conferences (virtual or otherwise). That's not going away anytime soon. But perhaps what has changed is how the information is accessed.

Do you need to debug some ancient perl? Sure, ask Claude. You'll get an answer and move on. But if you're looking to learn how to use the next technology before it's mainstream, you'll go looking for that material. And it's there, where you expect it to be. Do you still watch network television or haunt Blockbuster? Times change and the market moves on. The interesting thing is, people like books and they're also available for those looking for a physical artifact to hold. Most of what's available is POD. Depending on the title, you're hitting the print button when you place the order.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#45

Post by slashdev »

Legend2440 wrote: post #39
eterm wrote: post #20

> Stack Overflow is receiving about 3,800 questions a month The crazy thing is that SO is dying so quickly that it's already under half that amount. https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1926661#g...

This is why you never pay $1.8 billion for a social media company. It never ends well for the new owner. Not just Stack Overflow but also Tumblr, Vine, MySpace, Twitter, and more. Instagram might be the only exception. Good job on the founders for selling at the peak though.

Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp seemed to work out well.

It’s always more complex than you think

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#46

Post by Dig1t »

troad wrote: post #38
eterm wrote: post #20

> Stack Overflow is receiving about 3,800 questions a month The crazy thing is that SO is dying so quickly that it's already under half that amount. https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1926661#g...

Did anyone actually like StackOverflow? Any question asked would be edited beyond recognition (and usually into brash rudeness). Half the answers were demanding ever increasing proof of work, and the other half told the OP that they shouldn't even be trying to do what they're doing. The only useful thing were opinion based posts from people with domain expertise, and SO kept trying to ban and remove those. It was the…

It was pretty dang useful when there was no alternative, and I’m sure that many people physically could not have performed their jobs without copy-pasting from it.

But yeah, I don’t know how anyone could have any affection or nostalgia for it, people were massive jerks and it was not a pleasant place.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#48

Post by dev-ns8 »

I recently purchased Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective [0] and am currently working through it with pen and paper.

I've only had peripheral exposure to writing in assembly and "systems level" programming so I'm really quite enjoying it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Perspect...

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#49

Post by CharlieDigital »

natebc wrote: post #5
CharlieDigital wrote: post #2

It's a shame because to guide a coding agent, you need to have the right grammar and vocabulary to describe what you want and how you want it to be built. Junior devs should read not because they need to know how to write the code, but they need to know the vocabulary and the grammar to guide the agents.

Junior devs should still read to learn how to write the code. Surely the desired state isn't that nobody knows how to write code any more right?

    > Surely the desired state isn't that nobody knows how to write code any more right?
Shaping up like that in my org. At least one mid-career dev says he no longer looks at code.

I still look at code and find that agents work best when I write the foundation and then vibe on top of my hand-written code. Works extremely well because agent picks up my style accurately.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#50

Post by Gigachad »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #4

I think it might have been a cognitive development thing, but at some point in high school, Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" just kinda clicked for me, like I hadn't been reading it properly before.

I tried to get started with programming with books. But I just didn't seem to be getting anything, I'd read the chapters and not really learn or understand it. What really worked was interactive education like Codecademy and some others I have forgotten the name of.

Reading a small paragraph and then immediately putting it in to action made everything clear far better than books did.

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