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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#261

Post by lukeasrodgers »

Animats wrote: post #134

The decline of programming books removed a constraint on programming language complexity. At one point, the basic set of books for Java was six volumes. That's when language books broke down from sheer complexity. The combination of Google search and Stack Overflow allowed programming to become more complex than anyone could keep in their head. C++ bloated to the point that people who used to be C++ language lawyers…

Do you happen to have any links to more info about this schedule system. If I Google “sears schedule system” I get a bunch of results about vaccines, and if I append “logistics” the top result is your comment.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#262

Post by gchamonlive »

dspillett wrote: post #252
sevenzero wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI was public domain and free for everyone, I would have less issues with it (not saying no issues). But yeah, the only people actually benefiting from this are big tech corps who actively destroy society since over a decade now. The argument about the ability to self host doesn't really make sense to me given that most of society can not even afford RAM at the moment. So all these big tech frontier models should…

> because of economic pressures Self-hosting isn't relevant here anyway. When discussing the hoovering up of information irrespective of licences to produce the model, where the model is finally run isn't significant. You might not be paying the industry pirates-at-scale to run a model on their hardware, but you are still using the same information, irrespective of the same desires of its creators, the same way, just…

> You might not be paying the industry pirates-at-scale to run a model on their hardware, but you are still using the same information, irrespective of the same desires of its creators, the same way, just in a different location.

For individual use I personally think it's ok. Access to information shouldn't be penalized or regulated, but distribution should. So in this case it's relevant where a bootleg model is run.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#263

Post by rustyhancock »

jamiecurle wrote: post #231
jonbodner wrote: post #143

I'm the author of O'Reilly's "Learning Go". Here are the last 13 months of paperback book sales: - Mar 2026: 124 - Feb 2026: 140 - Jan 2026: 157 - Dec 2025: 306 - Nov 2025: 484 - Oct 2025: 218 - Sep 2025: 176 - Aug 2025: 136 - Jul 2025: 317 - Jun 2025: 230 - May 2025: 237 - Apr 2025: 165 - Mar 2025: 367 Sales are certainly down, but it has gone up and down in the past. Since the 1st edition came out in 2021, it has s…

I cancelled my O'Reilly subscription because it's cheaper for me to buy the books from the publisher. I go through one book every few months. I thought I'd go through more with unlimited access but I didn't. $539.88 a year vs maybe $140-$200 I spend on books (I take advantage of discount codes when they come up). I also like to go back to books. I cannot do that with the O'Reilly platform when a subscription ends. I…

I'm similar, I think perhaps it's a generational thing which slightly modified the title in a pedantic way.

The people who "grew up" with text books still crack new ones and old ones.

The current generation turning 18-21 don't.

It surprises me because I'm often asked why I knew X or Y odd perhaps esoteric fact or design pattern. Usually it's because I came across it in a book interested in something else.

It's that peripheral knowledge that is being lost when people use LLMs, and quick start guides.

Historically you'd have a team where skill, knowledge and experience was very variable but each person often brought another piece of the puzzle to a team.

Increasingly people have narrow knowledge "bases".

Does it matter? Perhaps not but it definitely has taken some of the joy of discussing problems and solutions out of my working life.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#264

Post by tardedmeme »

IsTom wrote: post #242
klausa wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin can't be used to express Polish; at least not without extra letters, at which point I think it ceases to be "just" Latin script? But maybe that was also your point.

> at which point I think it ceases to be "just" Latin script? I draw my line at 'U'.

When the testing is over, 'U' will be... missed.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#265

Post by nticompass »

jonbodner wrote: post #143

I'm the author of O'Reilly's "Learning Go". Here are the last 13 months of paperback book sales: - Mar 2026: 124 - Feb 2026: 140 - Jan 2026: 157 - Dec 2025: 306 - Nov 2025: 484 - Oct 2025: 218 - Sep 2025: 176 - Aug 2025: 136 - Jul 2025: 317 - Jun 2025: 230 - May 2025: 237 - Apr 2025: 165 - Mar 2025: 367 Sales are certainly down, but it has gone up and down in the past. Since the 1st edition came out in 2021, it has s…

This has nothing to do with the article posted or anything, I was just curious... who gets to pick the animal on the book cover? Do you (the author) get to pick, or does the publisher (O'Reilly) pick?

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#266

Post by markus_zhang »

ptek wrote: post #147
markus_zhang wrote: post #13

Curiously, I do buy and read tech books. My hobby is legacy OS kernel research so I bought some second handed books on old Linux (kernel 1.2) and NT (3.1). It is fun to research so I don’t use AI often for side projects.

Are you thinking of getting in to NeXTSTEP 3.3/OpenStep 4.2?

Thank you for the recommendation. That’s an interesting topic. I’m pretty full right now so unfortunately even getting into Linux and NT is a bit hard for me. I was reading VFS but bogged down due to lack of time :/

I also want to get into Solaris, too, because it introduces a lot of ideas back then.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#267

Post by pif »

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…

You may substitute StackOverflow with Quora and your answer would not get less valid.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#268

Post by olmo23 »

sevenzero wrote: post #190
jonbodner wrote: post #143

I'm the author of O'Reilly's "Learning Go". Here are the last 13 months of paperback book sales: - Mar 2026: 124 - Feb 2026: 140 - Jan 2026: 157 - Dec 2025: 306 - Nov 2025: 484 - Oct 2025: 218 - Sep 2025: 176 - Aug 2025: 136 - Jul 2025: 317 - Jun 2025: 230 - May 2025: 237 - Apr 2025: 165 - Mar 2025: 367 Sales are certainly down, but it has gone up and down in the past. Since the 1st edition came out in 2021, it has s…

>which have indexed all of the books and used pirated copies to do so Funnily enough, people on HN often do not consider this an issue, like at all... I wonder how they'd think about it if they had created something (meaningful) that was subjected to this. I love Go and learned it a lot in the past 2 years but ultimately put it down in favor of more "batteries included" solutions as I don't trust myself enough as a d…

> Funnily enough, people on HN often do not consider this an issue, like at all...

I didn't have a problem with it when it was Aaron Swartz, not sure why I should have a problem with it when others do it.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#269

Post by nticompass »

I have a small collection of programming/technology books, some from O'Reilly, others from Manning and No Starch Press. I've read them and they have been very helpful, but I will admit that I been buying less books. They take up space, and my shelves are full of these and other books like novels and manga.

Also, now when I am trying to learn a language, I just work on a project and search in the docs (or just on Kagi) to find what I am trying to do. Maybe a physical book would be a quicker reference, and maybe I should buy some more of them.

P.S. I enjoy finding old computer books (like DOS/Win95 era) at the thrift store.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#270

Post by anthk »

mejutoco wrote: post #255
klausa wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin can't be used to express Polish; at least not without extra letters, at which point I think it ceases to be "just" Latin script? But maybe that was also your point.

I like this metaphor. Spanish ñ, Catalan or French ç, German ß. Similarly for ł and other Polish letters. It seems strictly speaking the latin alphabet cannot cover many european languages. But mostly we can say latin can express that. You can write "ss" for German and l for Polish, etc, so it can definitely be used. Source: whatssap messages.

Spanish: 'ny' as a digraph. Accented vowels (stress marks) and ü -> 'a 'e 'i 'o 'u and maybe :u.
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