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not surprised. good application if one has the input data
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff.
Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed.
Going to donate them to the local high school...
Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me.
Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: bother with tech books
IMHO, as experience builds up, we ourselves become the "tech books" for juniors. They don't need to refer to manuals anymore.
For everything else, there's Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo.
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Yes. Yes I do. In fact, I just bought several books on x86 Assembler, AAarch64 Assembler, Rust, and Python. I prefer having paper in front of me as well as online resources.
I also have kept all of my EE books (I specialized in communications systems in the microwave region) and my original notes from college (converted to searchable PDF) which have been more valuable in a lot of cases than online documentation.
That's just me though, I'm pretty old school paper and pencil when it comes to engineering stuff. I learn better that way.
-Sean
----
Fire Nuts
modified 18-Mar-24 23:50pm.
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nope "
That's just me though "
has to do with basic physics. left that long ago and regret it.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Converting your college notes to pdf is a pretty cool move. I hauled a couple of boxes around for a long time containing my college notes and texts. After the first couple of years, I never referred to them again.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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One of my friend really wanted to read one (fiction) book, and was happy when I told him that I had got a copy that he could borrow. When he realized that I was talking about a physical, printed copy, my offer was turned down: He stopped reading printed books years ago. If I could scan the book for him, so he could read it on his laptop, he was interested, but please: No paper stuff! He would rather continue his search for an electronic copy.
I did not scan my copy for him. And I never later asked if he wanted to borrow any of my books, that be physical or digital.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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What kind of person asks a friend to scan an entire book for him?
And what exactly prevented this friend from scanning the book himself?
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Sometimes. Just sometimes, I have a good idea. I hit them up when I remember I used to know how to do something  . Mostly though, the notes I have about how I figured something out are the most useful. Typical engineering notebook stuff.
-Sean
----
Fire Nuts
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Books are for old people.
I used books at the start of my career, about fifteen years ago.
But now I rarely need to know 400 pages of information, so I just google for the particular thing I want to know, or ask ChatGPT.
Much easier than searching through books, which probably don't have that specific answer anyway.
If there's something new I must learn, online tutorials have gotten much better too.
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The problem with this approach is that information online disappears. I'm fighting a battle with Microsoft at the moment, trying to track information down. Since everyone is having orgasms over chat this and that and AI, I think that is where the info is moving. I'll have to suck it up and figure it out.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I recently had the issue of working on an old Angular 1 application (not even that old, 2016 or something).
Obviously, searching for Angular, even with the addition of "1" or "JS", gets you results for Angular 2+, which is completely different.
I managed, but just barely.
Don't know if I would've found the answers in a book though (but an Angular 1 book might've helped).
Angular seems kind of an odd one out though.
Other than that I'm more often ahead of the online articles 
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I prefer textbooks to be dead tree. I find that learning a new subject from them is much easier than doing the same online. OTOH, when I just want to look up something I use the Internet, like everyone else.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Mostly agree. However, I do like online courses as well. I just perform and learn better with 'dead tree'.
-Sean
----
Fire Nuts
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A while back I donated about 40-50 tech books to a local high school. I read them once but the Mr. Google knows most of what I need to know.
And you're right, a lot of the tech books are terrible!
Definition of a burocrate; Delegate, Take Credit, shift blame.
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.1 JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator
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Anything related to computing : no.
It just ages too quickly.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Yes, computer books age quickly.
But then: Maybe computer/programming fashions change (far) too rapidly. I have a good share of old computer books, and every now and then I flip through them, asking myself (because noone else want to listen  ): Why did we abandon that idea? And this one? How much better is really that new methodology, compared to the four or five preceding it?
Some times, there really were good reasons for ditching this or that technique. Surprisingly often, the major "good" reason was that something new had been proposed and strongly promoted. In hindsight (and after two or three even more revolutionary new methodologies) we may have difficulties realizing what was so great about #2. Especially considering the strongholds of #1 that we ditched, which were actually good ideas! #3 wasn't that much of an improvement over #2, and #4 none at all. So fortunately we today have alternative #5 that will really improve things! (At least until #6 comes and tell us that it #5 is old thrash.)
Some times, when I point out to some younger guy how we did that very elegantly with now abandoned tools, I am told "We can achieve the same, at least approximately, by doing this, and that, and then this ... no, that ..." Yes, you can. But not with the same simplicity and lucidity. In principle, we could have retained the old stuff, but the developers of #2 and #3 and #4 and #5 wanted to stand out as something radically new, not just another extension to some old stuff.
So I do read my old computer books, to recall methodologies, techniques and tools that we let go much too easily. And to better understand the reasons why it was definitely right to let some other techniques go forever.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Greetings Kind Regards
Here is a story I've been waiting to tell. My master's thesis involved the FORTRAN simulation of random functions for the purpose of testing my advisor's mathematical model. In an effort to learn more I stole a text on the subject of random function theory from the University of Illinois library. In attempting to read it I could not get passed the 1st few pages. I found them incomprehensible. I had great hopes of unlocking the great mathematical secrets I assumed it contained as it was authored by a Russian and as we all know they are great mathematicians. In a subsequent meeting w/ my advisor I held up the text stating my attempt to study it. I was surprised by his reaction as he seemed to be intimidated by its presumed "advanced stuff" as he stated as he was held in high regard in the department w/ the standard and common saying "George is correct by definition." I completed the thesis w/o discerning the presumed magical mathematics contained therein. The text sat on my book shelf for many years and I often thought of it as a treasure chest if only I had the key to opening it. Subsequent for no particular reason I attempted again to study it. Upon reading again the 1st few mysterious pages I realized why I could not previously make sense of them. They were gibberish! Mathematical gibberish. As near as I could discern it was the author's or perhaps the translator's attempt to provide a mathematics of the symbology utilized in describing the mathematics of the subject at hand id est a mathematics of the mathematics. Ugh. I merely ignored these pages and continued reading further finding this introductory "information" not even referenced and quickly learned in only a few pages the great secret all powerful mathematics was precisely the same as my advisor had utilized in his own work. The remaining hundred or so pages of the text were of no use despite impressive chapter titles.
As for texts in general I have high regard. A.M. Yaglom being the exception.
- Best
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Back in the 90s I literally went through 100s of tech books. Not an exaggeration. Everything is digital these days though. I still have books on trading, etc. but the volume of books I buy has dropped. These days you can use online courses like Udemy or YouTube, etc.
Would I read a tech book again? Sure. But, not nearly as much as I did as a kid.
Jeremy Falcon
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...will trade "python (for dummies) " for "all you wanted to know about Bluetooth..."
must exclude 2000 plus pages of "spec" and "bluez" ....
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I recently had a clear out and relegated "Undocumented DOS" and "MSDOS 6.0", plus several others to the garage. They'll probably just get trashed as I can't think of anyone I know who'd want obscure details of a system nearly 30 years old!
In fact, I can't remember the last time I actually looked at a tech book for information...
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I recently purchased Code by Charles Petzold, but that is only for personal amusement.
The last programming book I actually got any use out of was the manual for Turbo Pascal - now that was a good manual.
For image processing the book Machine Vision Algorithms and Application by Carsten Steger, Markus Ulrich and Christian Weidemann was very useful when I was starting out. A little dated now in the 3D world, but still worth a read.
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I was trying to remember the name of one of my favorite books - Code Complete by Petzold McConnell. Just some good common sense coding information. lol, mixing up my old time writers.
Thanks for the reminder.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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