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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

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Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#211

Post by klausa »

brnt wrote: post #203
hibikir wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Compare that to looking inside a C++ standard library: It's not impossible, but it's of a completely different nature of normal C++ we might write for a business. C++ isn't a language, it's a script. Like Latin, it can be used to express English, Polish and Indonesian.

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.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#213

Post by arc-in-space »

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…

Absolutely. Whenever I learn a new thing I'll always approach it from different angles - sources from people with varying skill levels (it can be useful to know how another beginner dealt with something!), video form, written text, reading the theory, seeing the applications, trying it yourself in various forms, different constraints etc. For example, since we're on hn - writing some data structure or algorithm you're learning in a few different languages. Doing all this helps massively with building up to true understanding.

(cooking - when learning a new recipe, I'll always find a few versions from reliable sources to compare, see what they have in common, and try to understand the reasoning behind differences)

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#214

Post by vmilner »

stack_framer wrote: post #205

I'm reading The C Programming Language, 2nd edition (the K&R book), and working through all the exercises. It's a great book, although it's forcing me to admit that I need glasses (the print is so small)!

I enjoyed reading Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets by Peter van der Linden after reading that in the early 90s. Also the C standard from the time and the attached 'Rationale' document https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub160.pdf (The rationale is 234 pages in). Also this 1995 book version of the comp.lang.c FAQ https://c-faq.com/book/ and https://c-faq.com/

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#216

Post by oersted »

I do not think they are too valuable anymore as references you keep coming back to, that use-case has been long superseded by the internet, well before AI. But for a novice learning programming, I still believe that there's absolutely no substitute to reading a book from cover to cover.

I have seen a myriad examples of people that have half-learned a language from random snippets in the web (or from AI now), and the struggle never ends. And taught courses or videos tend to be too time-inefficient and too shallow, more of an intro.

A good book is still by far the best way to get the complete and cohesive overview of a technology and put it into context. It gives you the kind of mental model that allows you to solve fresh problems from first principles thinking, because you understand the whole breadth and depth of how the technology works.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#217

Post by kleiba2 »

I once bought a programming book in the 1990s. Since then, I never found the need for it anymore: you could simply find all the resources you needed online (and long before ChatGPT).

StackOverflow is kinda forgotten now, but there was a time where you could find the answers to pretty much all your programming questions there, and if not, you could simply post a question yourself (and yes, there was a time where SO was pleasant to use and your question didn't get immediately shut down by overzealous admins).

I personally never liked learning a programming language from a book. Like, in the early days of Java, I would get so much more use out of the then excellent API docs than out of secondary material.

And of course, programming is one of those disciplines where you really have to just try it out to really make progress.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#218

Post by benterix »

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.

I believe we're getting close to that in pure math.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#219

Post by dabinat »

ikr678 wrote: post #114
infinet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pedagogy suggests that you retain more when you also have a spatial element to what you are reading - eg you recall not only what the text was but where exactly on the page you read it, and perhaps also how far through the book it was. Textbook designers know this and use images, callout boxes and insets with case studies/graphs to break up text on pages so that your brain gets extra context to map 'what' to 'whe…

This is true: a way to remember things is to construct a “memory palace” in a place you know well, where different pieces of information correspond to different locations inside the building.
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