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It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well.
Has anyone found alternative ways to consume this information for brains that work like mine?
Huh. Mine would be: * The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks * Rapid Development, McConnell * Extreme Programming Explained, Beck, et al * Test-Driven Development by Example, Beck * Domain-Driven Design, Evans And something that wasn't a book but made a huge impact was Eric Ries's blog, Startup Lessons Learned, circa 2009. He correctly spotted that things like Extreme Programming are generic software development processes, b…
Mine will be none. Only practice, coding, building, testing, exercising again and again has helped me.
Have you considered trying books filled with structured exercises? I worked through The Little Lisper when I was at university and I got a lot out of it, for example.
Can you recommend any other content like that?
I’ve read The Pragmatic Programmer. It’s not a bad book - I was nodding along the whole way. And that’s sort of the problem with the books of this genre. The thing is, I recognize that these are good techniques because I already spent lots of time applying them. I just don’t know if the idea of compressing years of hands on experience into a textbook works well in practice. This goes for most self-help books as well.
But they get very helpful once you've been in a few battles and failed miserably. You'll be able to determine where you went wrong, whereas before it escaped you. You'll then find out how to not make those mistakes again, and do it right next time.
Huh. Mine would be: * The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks * Rapid Development, McConnell * Extreme Programming Explained, Beck, et al * Test-Driven Development by Example, Beck * Domain-Driven Design, Evans And something that wasn't a book but made a huge impact was Eric Ries's blog, Startup Lessons Learned, circa 2009. He correctly spotted that things like Extreme Programming are generic software development processes, b…
I love the Mythical Man-Month, but it’s one of those books that only software engineers seem to read, and they already know what’s in it.
Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…
We skim websites/articles because there is so much information out there, and not all of it is useful. I skim articles and then go back to fully read them once I make sure they’re actually worth the time. Same with some books, but books generally are worth it since they went through the publishing process, etc.
Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…
[0] https://archive.org/details/the-unwritten-laws-of-engineerin...
Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…
The thing that changed my career as a software engineer, in terms of seniority & remuneration by time and effort, was by changing my efforts from learning arbitrary tech to learning the domain I worked in. Asking useful domain-related questions gets you noticed in stand ups and helps you write the right code. I work in fintech so the best bang for my buck I’ve had was reading an entry level cert in investment finance…
Exactly. Programming is ultimately pretty simple. The hard part is the specific domain knowledge of the business.