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Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

unix.foo

341–350 of 367 posts

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

>I used to write books in the past (all obsolete since, well, two decades+ now) and I'm totally fine with piracy

Thats why I wrote meaningful. Two decade old books are depending on the topic rarely still meaningful (even if they might've been at the time of publishing). Talking about non-fiction here, as there's a ton of old but still relevant fiction out there. Nonetheless, if you would have published these last year or whatever, I think you'd think differently about it if your sales broke down by 50%+ due to AI.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and IBM has current documentation if you need to that has been updated in 2026: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.2.0?topic=considerations-u... It's generally and simply an encoding of what amounts to binary machine code which you translate via assembly code acting as a deterministic compiler from assembly to machine code if you are doing it manually. LLMs aren't a deterministic process and human languages aren'…

O.M.G. I last used a card punch in circa 1980 or thereabouts...

[deleted]

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#343
post #38
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…

It was good for finding answers. But as a community to actually participate it was horrible. You couldn't even answer questions, because if you didn't get enough likes they would block you from answering any more.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#344
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It was good for finding answers. But as a community to actually participate it was horrible. You couldn't even answer questions, because if you didn't get enough likes they would block you from answering any more.

Huh? That's not how it works at all.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Surely people still use textbooks for formal education? This has to be something that happens later.

I actually require the book the Jon Bodner was talking about in a class I teach every couple of years. The students who do well (the ones you would want to hire) will read it, the others will skim or try to summarize it

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was good for finding answers. But as a community to actually participate it was horrible. You couldn't even answer questions, because if you didn't get enough likes they would block you from answering any more.

Huh? That's not how it works at all.

I was unable to post answers to the questions within my domain of knowledge, because I didn't post answers (and get likes) outside of my domain of knowledge.

There's a minimum threshold of likes ("reputation") necessary to post in many parts of that service.

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#347
post #38
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 was a great resource

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#348
I think this is way before llms the common thinking, "books are too slow" "I want the now knowledge of the latest reinvention of the wheel", but I guess it will make it worse

My company does incentive book club reading, which makes it easier

Recently we read "100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them" and found interesting how most of the programming challenges haven't changed in years, and are the same for all languages

Good books are amazing, like a knowledge vector, that teaches to solve the thing you need, the context it should sit in, emerged from, and possible future solutions

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#349
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.

"ss" is a different sound in German.

Trasse (line/ train path) vs Straße (street)

Re: Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore

#350

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…

I recommend using internet archive to access free texts for ereaders. LLMs will be trained on these texts already, it is better to get it straight from the source.
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