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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#171

Post by DocTomoe »

I had a whole zoo of - physical - O'Reilly books back in the day. I still own a few today, but they tend to be less language-specific and more 'best practices'-oriented (Hello, 'Bad Data Handbook').

What made me stop was not LLMs, but that I started to get frustrated by every book spending what felt like 20% of its volume on 'how to properly install this' - something that was little value to me (that's the packet manager's job, and I am not screwing up my installation becaue you like that other processor flag more) - while prices rose. Final nail in the coffin was when O'Reilly decided to aggressively push their subscription model. I'm not paying money every month to get access to a library whose books can disappear at will.

I still buy the occasional No Starch Press book.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#172

Post by nl »

hibikir wrote: post #156
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…

When we go back to early Java, the death of books just came from better IDEs, not even stack overflow (which wasn't there) or Google search (which had little to find). Something like IntelliJ made the very large reference section irrelevant, as you got to see source and Javadocs right there. Intellisense also found most of what you needed blindly. That was 90% of those 6 java books. You'd still see a need for specifi…

> Maybe some madman that could explain the initial implementation of the Calendar classes.

java.util.Date (which was all there was until I think Java 1.3?) was truly terrible and apparently was written by an intern at Sun.

java.util.Calendar was a mess and horrible to use but mostly correct.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#173

Post by bulbar »

infinet wrote: post #70
nritchie wrote: post #31

Not true for everyone. I learned Rust from The Rust Programming Language ("The Rust Book") and "Rust for Rustaceans." Sure, coming from C/C++, I could have learned the syntax online but learning best idioms and styles required the time and commitment to read a book cover-to-cover. In fact, I've probably read each page in "Rust for Rustaceans" at least twice to ensure that I understood some of the more subtle points.…

I have a gut feeling that human as a creature learns better when looking at the information from several different angles, both physically and mentally. Been physically I mean looking at the same concept on screen and on hard copy books, perhaps taking notes and mark relevent sentences with a highlighter. Similarly, seeing a concept on physical book and write some short code snippet is viewing the concept from differ…

The brain is a large network and humans learn best when an information doesn't life in isolation but can be integrated within.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#175

Post by DANmode »

DANmode wrote: post #141
Gigachad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both before my time. These days it seems like every site is able to withstand pretty much every controversy. Facebook should have died about 5 times by now but the company is as strong as ever.

LifeLog doesn’t ever die, it just takes the form it needs to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#176

Post by adityaathalye »

Funny, I think a dead-tree book (or PDF you won't copy from) is a great format to learn programming from. Retyping things into the editor is underrated, as a form of engaging more viscerally with the material (brains work better when they get to play with the clay), as a way to build muscle memory for the language, as a way to absorb idioms by osmosis, and so forth.

Different brains, different strokes, but I think the book format is not wrong, the teaching and learning expectations are.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#179

Post by runjake »

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…

2 of May 2026 is me! Learning Go is such a great book.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#180

Post by locusofself »

This might be an unpopular thing to do, but lately I've been literally having claude/chatgpt write books for my personal consumption: things to brush up interview skills, python, system design, and even agentic coding. I've also had it aggregate substack posts for me, etc.

I have it generate an ePub file, and drag and drop it to my kindle.

It's a great way to take information with me, out for a long walk where I can focus on it and absorb it.

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