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Recently I found myself looking through a textbook to find some data time stuff, and I found it somewhat refreshing to go to an index page then turn to a page? Does anybody else find themselves looking over textbooks and manuals for your questions and how to?
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Not since the DOS 5.1 manual. Today, we have MSDN.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Sigh.. 5.0; twas a big fat reference-manual, with complete syntax for each command; over 500 pages. Later versions did not come with a big manual, but with a small booklet, mostly disclaimer.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Nope.
I haven't opened a single paper book since I got my tablet in 2012...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I take it your read the manuals in their electronic format?
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Yes - or MSDN / Google.
PDF's on the PC can be a pain (they don't like to remember the page you were on, and for a 1000 page book it's not worth adding bookmarks as it takes a while to save) but... they have search facilities which moves them leaps and bounds beyond paper versions.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OG, my biggest complaint with PDFs is that I should be able to link to a specific page when I open one!
This just reminded me, although I do go ahead and use book marks, despite taking time to save them.
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I still use text books for learning new tech, I'll pick up a Wrox book or something and go through it. I know that's terrible old-fashioned of me, I should really find a tech forum and ask "How to get data from user then store data in database then search data and show results then export to pdf?". Learning how to code an entire discipline from a form post is far more efficient, but I just like wasting my time.
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Same here. I buy how-to books when learning something new, although these days I buy them in kindle format as they are a lot lighter. I much prefer hard copy ... but it's much handier to have the book on my phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.
Learning -- hard copy
Research -- soft copy
Forums can be useful when I'm trying to solve a single problem ... but there's so much chaff that sometimes that isn't easier, either.
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My Kindle is gathering dust. I much prefer a real book.
Having said that, CP, MSDN, stick exchange & Google get most of my attention.
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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My kindle doesn't get a lot of usage any more, either. While it's really handy when in bright light conditions (eInk technology rocks), the processor and memory Amazon puts into Kindles is substandard. I have Kindle software on my PCs, phone, and tablet -- the software is far more functional than kindle units.
I use Calibre (calibre - E-book management[^]) for my library management and reading non-Kindle books, and Aldiko for reading on my phone and tablet.
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Yes, when I can, especially when the the text of more than a couple of paragraphs. Sometimes (OK more than sometimes) I need the searchability of electronic documents. For instance some MCUs have mighty large manuals, that you simply can't thumb through in a reasonable amount of time. Though I do tend to print sections of intererst once I find them.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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"Send codez plz" works for me...
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I crack open a book once and a while. Its good to give the ol' eyes a rest from the screen. I also feel that fundamentally its a better approach to build a foundation of knowledge on a development topic, as opposed to just binging your way around from the get go.
I have also been known to visit the local library on occasion. 
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Depending on the layout I generally find it easier to read the "Book form" rather than Digital.
It would be nice If i could afford both the Digital and The book form.
You can print just some pages better with the digital form and do a string search for the exact term you are looking for.
Some of the layouts are just better in the book form and easier for me to follow.
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I use textbooks sometimes, but more ones that cover processes/design not actual code stuff.
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When learning a new subject or looking up detailed data about some algorithm (complexity etc.), I use a printed book. When looking up details (e.g. the syntax of the foobar command), I use MSDN or some such.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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I use printed books less every day - and I sure miss them!
So, all the time I keep buying new textbooks when I need to learn something new. And I keep missing the old textbooks. Because technical authors these days write for the screen: Detached, disorganized and unstructured, incomplete. No natural progression, no concern about the reader, neither his real needs nor his background.
Lots of textbooks nowadays look as if the author has had a brainstorming, simply jotting down elements that he thinks the reader should know of, in the order they came to the author's mind. What didn't come to mind during that brainstorming, doesn't make it into his book. No atttempt is made to draw the big map, making the user understand what is really going on; it is more like trying to minimize the reader's level of understanding, relieve the user from 'having to' know. 'Just do exactly what I tell you to, and you'll be fine!'
I truly hate these dozens upon dozens of books with titles like "XXX in three days", "Set up a ZZZ in less than a week", "All you have to know about YYY" - plus all the books with different titles, but with a similar content.
I hate those books that tell the reader 'Type so-and-so and press Enter to complete the line', and then on the next page goes ahead telling the reader that 'You can find all the details of CSS if you google around a little'. I have never, ever, met a user who must be told to press Enter, yet capable of understanding how CSS is put together!
And finally, I hate those books that, judged from the table of contents, are seemingly well organized, with clearly defined chapter headings, so you can skip topics that - at least at the moment - are completely irrelevant to you (such as "Installing the system on an iMac" or "Translating to languages using non-Western character sets"), but later you realize that those essential details you spent hours finding on the Internet are included in the book, in that chapter on iMac installation: That's where the author made use of that facility. In no way is it iMac specific; in no way is it restricted to installation, and it is certainly not mentioned in the index section. You are forced to read through a lot of irrelevant stuff to make sure that you are not missing out on essential details.
What I miss is not the physical paper format as the cohererent, complete, well structured information that you could find in the old books. Nowadays, I have to buy half a dozen books on any given topic, read them all from start to end, and try to straighten out the mess myself. And then it is usually just as good picking up the pieces by googling.
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Yes indeed! I remember reading Michael Abrash's book "Zen of Assembly Language" way back in the DOS days. It was like a "Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance" kind of book for understanding not just assembly language but also algorithms in general. I walked away from that book feeling like I understood more about my craft.
The same can be said of the famous Petzold "Programming Windows" books. I _knew_ how Windows programs worked internally, and knowledge of message pumps, device contexts, and the GDI still comes in handy today. More recently, I've been a fan of the APress Programming .NET books since they give a lot of detail that's not easy to find elsewhere.
I've noticed two trends recently though that disturb me. It makes me sound "old", but I really do think it's a generational thing. First, young programmers in our company turn to video instruction first, forums second, and books almost not at all. It's fine for a superficial understanding that allows you to get work done, but until you really grok the async framework (speaking .NET here), lambdas, and so on it's difficult to work with existing code so lots of stuff gets duplicated. Second, it seems like our profession is more willing to put up with copy-and-paste code from Stack Overflow answers than it has ever been. Tons of people who couldn't code themselves out of a box are writing software for large corporations by pasting in the work of others and messing with it until it has the appearance of working. This "good enough coding" style is what makes business folk think we're all easily replaceable and that coding is super simple.
At the end of the day, I blame big business for killing off the book. Doing things right and avoiding obvious security flaws just isn't important to stakeholders anymore. That's why we're _still_ seeing SQL injection attacks in 2016... Technical instruction is now aimed at the copy-and-paste people. The market will follow the consumers, and us book-reading folk no longer represent the majority.
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I tend to buy the Kindle version of a book, if it's available. More and more are being provided that way. It's a lot cheaper for a start.
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I've not read paper documentation since I worked in 68k Assembler on an Atari ST...
My first proper gig was on a Mac using Metrowerks CodeWarrior to build image manipulation apps for pre-press. Came with 'Inside Macintosh' - on two CDs.
I miss books though. There's something really comforting about having pages open next to you that you can flick through, dog ear the corner so you can find it again, and make notes in the margin and such.
Halcyon days...
Danny
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I rarely use paper manuals; they occupy too much space  I love Safari Online, and Google (*enter your own preference*) can be a good friend too. The only problem with searching online is that one needs to sort the wheat from the chaff too much.
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Only if vehicle service manuals count as tech manuals For whatever reason, it's much more pleasant to have a hard-copy manual to refer to when working on my cars.
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