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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#191

Post by kelnos »

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…

> Did anyone actually like StackOverflow?

Absolutely! It answered so many questions I had. I remember when it was relatively new, and I'd just heard about it, it profoundly changed how I found answers to programming questions. Suddenly I could find people having similar problems that I had, who had asked the question, and had actually gotten a useful answer from someone who knew!

It wasn't perfect, of course (nothing is), but it was orders of magnitude better sifting through crap blog posts and confusing reference material. (Not to mention sites like experts-exchange.)

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#192

Post by kwstas_el »

I believe it really depends on the programming book. For introductory topics (Learning Python, HTTP Basics) one is better off with sources from Google or GPT generated since they are much simpler, faster to access and high quality sources out there. But for more low level topics, books like "Designing Data Intensive Applications" are still the first option for most people; you can't easily find corresponding material online that provides the same level of depth, structure, and context.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#194

Post by dmantis »

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…

> There will be businesses no human can comprehend or manage.

If nobody neither fully created nor manages the business, then we probably shouldn't assume any property rights on it by anyone, therefore all the profits must go to the public.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#197

Post by dmantis »

I don't feel that LLMs are replacing books for professionals.

The problem with LLM learning is not that they can't explain a concept, but you have to know what to ask in the first place. To get a deep proper answer from LLMs you need a deep precise prompt. When you learn the new topic, you don't know about the topic itself, so you need a properly structured interleaved material to grasp new concepts.

After you get the concepts from books, you can prompt the LLM for particular non-covered subjects you are interested in.

So even these days when I'm interested in some topic, I sometimes even ask the very same LLM to provide me top-10,top-20 books for the topic, with short overview for which type and level of readers and style they are, pick a few and read them.

LLM is a replacement for docs and simple questions on StackOverflow, not for the real organized knowledge that requires a few hours session of concentration to understand.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#198

Post by jrowen »

dmantis wrote: post #194
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…

> There will be businesses no human can comprehend or manage. If nobody neither fully created nor manages the business, then we probably shouldn't assume any property rights on it by anyone, therefore all the profits must go to the public.

Check and mate, capitalists!

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#199

Post by kelnos »

locusofself wrote: post #180

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…

How are you sure that it hasn't hallucinated content that you end up relying on?

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#200

Post by pdntspa »

dmantis wrote: post #197

I don't feel that LLMs are replacing books for professionals. The problem with LLM learning is not that they can't explain a concept, but you have to know what to ask in the first place. To get a deep proper answer from LLMs you need a deep precise prompt. When you learn the new topic, you don't know about the topic itself, so you need a properly structured interleaved material to grasp new concepts. After you get th…

You can ask them for high-level overviews of a given topic, and then drill down into individual sections of its response. With the most recent iterations, many of the times I have blindly stumbled into something new, it has pushed back with warnings
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