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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#281

Post by DanielHB »

Why is everyone so focused on programming language specific books? Even when I was in uni before stack overflow I did not find them that useful. All reference docs were already online.

However the theory books are still worth reading, if you read any of the intro Tanenbaum books from cover to cover you know the subject far better than everyone not directly working in the subject (and probably more than many that do).

Doing any kind of mildly-complex parallel programming code without having a theory book about it fresh in your head should be a crime.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#282

Post by physicsguy »

I think this is an age thing but I think young people getting into programming are dramatically underserved by not doing this. I think Claude/ChatGPT are great at getting answer to a specific question or set of questions and even going quite deep on it, but they don't offer the clarity of the human 'big picture' and 'right order for introducing these concepts' view on a topic, at least not yet.

Edit: I should say, topic conceptual based books I mean here. Something like 'Designing Data Intensive Pipelines', not 'Learn Python' which is out of date before it's even published

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#283

Post by TacticalCoder »

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…

> I wonder how they'd think about it if they had created something (meaningful) that was subjected to this.

I used to write books in the past (all obsolete since, well, two decades+ now) and I'm totally fine with piracy: people who are pirating content are typically not those who are going to pay for it anyway.

As a sidenote I'd really wish that state resources spent fighting bad actors in society was first uses to catch and imprison rapists and the likes and not chasing pirates sailing the digital high-seas but I digress...

Priorities.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#284

Post by whimblepop »

rustyhancock wrote: post #263
jamiecurle wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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 was like this in the days when the primary shortcut was StackOverflow as well. People who are allergic to RTFM treat things that are covered in the docs as "esoteric" knowledge because they never read anything except as a shortcut to solving their immediate problem.

I think the stats are clear that reading is in decline in general, though. I'm sure LLMs will add to this much like YouTube has.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#285

Post by NetMageSCW »

Gigachad wrote: post #83
OneMorePerson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating the different ways human minds work and learn. I'm the same way. It also shows up in other areas like language learning where some people prefer classes and grammar books, and others prefer to just learn via exposure to a lot of content.

I think this is probably just the common experience. Programming is probably best learned hands on rather than through a book, which is why the use of programming books has fallen off a cliff once we got other options. Even before AI I think programming books had already fallen off in popularity. There would be some things books can provide that are probably better than other options, but for a lot of hands on skills…

I used to read a constant stream of magazines before such books became more widely available, and then just read the books and knew the language. I could read APL after reading a pick and write C after reading the book.

Different people learn differently and not everyone needs to type something in to learn it.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#286

Post by randusername »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #23

Beyond the slowing you to type, the key part of the good books was the considered and mindful order of presentation. This is what had me spending money when I could get the reference manual for free - a guide , a book that taught me unfamiliar concepts in top down fashion, and took some degree of responsibility to be both accessible and comprehensive. I love the tutoring of LLM, but to this day as a complement to a g…

> the key part of the good books was the considered and mindful order of presentation

I'd always start with textbooks then flesh out the gaps with internet materials.

I felt "linear learning" from a veteran practitioner gave me a shortcut to how I should store the material and conceptualize the relationships between moving parts. Like surveying the land, putting foundations where an expert might put them, but then I was on my own for what knowledge to actually build.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#287

Post by NetMageSCW »

SilentM68 wrote: post #107

I do, actually. Trying to find good material to read for Odin programming language. Most books, are just hard to follow, not newbie-friendly, always gushing with bloat, with things that make the book fatter, making it easier to up the price. Student's usually end up paying the price :( Sol, Off-Topic: If I suspect that somebody in a company, or message board is tampering with a user's account, when they are not suppo…

Off-topic: There is no remedy. What law is being broken?

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#288

Post by jonbodner »

joseda-hg wrote: post #279
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 is not a jab at you (or your book), But I always assumed O'Reilly's per book sales would be significantly larger, like 4 figures at the minimum

Yeah. I don’t think people are aware of how few books are purchased. At this moment, Learning Go is 45,855 on Amazon US across all physical books. This is in the top few percent of book sales. The number tends to bounce between the 50,000s and the 30,000s, but sometimes slips higher or lower. One or two sales in a week moves a book quite a bit.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#289

Post by jonbodner »

nticompass wrote: post #265
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?

For Go it had to be a Gopher (as it is the mascot for the language). My editor showed me the artwork and I approved it.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#290

Post by mrbonner »

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 bought 3 programming books last month including this one. I really enjoy “Learning Go” over the official go book.
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