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I was looking over my SafariBookshelf (tech bookshelf online) and I saw the Wrox book Visual Studio 2017 and I was thinking about how it is garbage now that 2019 is in preview 2 release. (Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit.)
Do you still read technical books? Do you buy hardcopy at book store? I often notice that a lot of the books even at local Barnes and Noble are quite stale.
The whole Win8, Win10 thing pretty much killed windows books. At one point Barnes and Noble had Win7, Win8 and Win10 books on the shelf.
I think Angular is a big one that is to blame too. Every time I turn around Angular is a completely new release. Now .NET Core seems to be doing the same thing.
It's fairly crazy that the constant updates & releases almost make things completely un-documentable (worse than ever).
Foundational Concepts
Some books are good because they are based more on foundational types of thoughts. Like the recent release by Martin Fowler which I am reading (which I both like and don't like at the same time).
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)): Martin Fowler: 9780134757599: Amazon.com: Books[^]
This is Fowler's first release in quite some time.
It is interesting but it is a slow read. I think it does point out some interesting "Refactoring Patterns" but I think it is odd that he chose JavaScript as the main language. JS seems wrong for some of the things that are related to true Interfaces.
Have you read the book, by chance?
It's good but only if you're in the mood for slow type of philosophical thinking about coding.
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It used to be the only way to get the information you needed, but I think the last hard-copy dev book I bought was Booch (so we're talking a lot of years ago!)
I've bought a few e-books, purely out of interest, or when I needed to get up and running with a new language quickly, but even they are not long-term things, any more.
I don't even ask programming questions here, because if I search for what I wanted to ask, I almost invariably find that someone has already given the answer.
So the answer is "No, but I miss it".
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: last hard-copy dev book I bought was Booch (so we're talking a lot of years ago!)
That is a long time ago. I recently bought one hardcopy book but before that, it has probably been 10 years (at least). I only bought it because it is one of the only times in the last 10 years (or longer) that a book I wanted to read wasn't already on my Safari Bookshelf (Professional Android: Reto Meier, Ian Lake: 9781118949528: Amazon.com: Books[^]).
Mark_Wallace wrote: So the answer is "No, but I miss it".
I feel the same way. A lot of books are just absolutely generated and written like snippets from blog posts anyways so they aren't very good -- don't really tell the story like an old Petzold book. Even books are in too much of a hurry a lot of times. Probably because the author knows that if he doesn't finish the book in weeks it is dead now.
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Do you still read technical books? Do you buy hardcopy at book store? I often notice that a lot of the books even at local Barnes and Noble are quite stale.
Nah, get all the codez I need on QA. 
I agree, miss all the stuff that BN had on the shelves. Guess it is putting them out of business too. Sad.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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theoldfool wrote: miss all the stuff that BN had on the shelves.
Yeah, I like amazon a lot, but the local B&N is a special place and I hope they don't begin to fail.
B&N has to have so much stock on the shelves, it's got to be difficult. Tech books have such a short shelf life I'm almost amazed they keep many of them at all.
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raddevus wrote:
Do you still read technical books?
Yes, but not for finding the answer to a question/problem. I buy and read them much like any other story book, front to back, to see what the author has done. Sometimes seeing their project/code samples gives me an idea on something that I may not have thought of before. YMMV.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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David Crow wrote: I buy and read them much like any other story book, front to back, to see what the author has done.
That's the way I prefer to read tech books too. That's also why specific publishers and authors are best...because they tell the story of the technology. Others may just be quickly documenting things and they tend to jump around a lot.
The best books really give a context of the technology and how it works.
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raddevus wrote: It's good but only if you're in the mood for slow type of philosophical thinking about coding.
Books are great for explaining topics that are too big for a forum-post.
Having reviewed manuscripts for Manning, I'd also like to point out that there's more eyes checking the content than your regular forum-post; the content has been verified and villified a few times, before it goes to print.
Also still maintain a personal library; can't remember everything I read, so it is nice to be able to look up a(n) (anti)pattern for reference.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Having reviewed manuscripts for Manning, I'd also like to point out that there's more eyes checking the content than your regular forum-post
I agree. Manning books in particular are very well done. Some other publishers are not near as good but are just flooding the market with content right now.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: Also still maintain a personal library;
I think that is a good idea too.
I read a lot of ebooks but I still prefer hardcopy for the most part. However, ebooks are nice for night-time reading since my device is backlit and it's all you need (no other light source).
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raddevus wrote: I read a lot of ebooks but I still prefer hardcopy for the most part. However, ebooks are nice for night-time reading since my device is backlit and it's all you need (no other light source).
My eyes start to burn if I do that for a longer time; paper is a lot more friendly, and most important, no ads, no popups, no cookywarnings
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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A lot of bookstores don't even carry tech books because they are so expensive and the turn over is so fast that they get stuck with them.
Got my site back up after my time in the woods!
JaxCoder.com
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Mike Hankey wrote: A lot of bookstores don't even carry tech books
I know. It's got to be tough enough for bookstores having all that stock all the time to be interesting enough for people to come in. Then with tech books it's even worse because the content can completely die on the shelf and no one even wants it. And finally the book stores often don't even know which tech has died either because they are not tech people working in the industry so they have stuff that isn't even wanted.
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I still buy them, as previously mentioned by others, more for end to end reading to validate/expand on what I may already know or for a walkthrough if new/different technologies and offerings. I find them easier to work through and the explanations are usually better, than what's online.
I don't use them to problem solve existing solutions.
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Wastedtalent wrote: I find them easier to work through and the explanations are usually better, than what's online.
I agree. sometimes you want far more than what you can really get online.
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I've even thrown away books about not-changing-anymore-technology (Turbo Pascal 7, anyone?) simply because looking it up online is faster than browsing through the book.
Neither do I use books for philosophical thinking, I do that entirely in my head. Books only distract me from arranging the building blocks in an abstract space.
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Personally I never buy hardcopy "How to X with Y" type books any more, mostly because they are out of date by the time you get them (echoing your sentiments with for example Angular) and also because they tend to cater to the lowest common denominator and don't actually teach you much outside of Y's documentation.
Foundational stuff like "Continuous Delivery", "Release It!", "Patterns of Enterprise Architecture" and all that kind of thing age much better IMO. I still refer back to my copy of the *original* Fowler Refactoring book from time to time
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Member 10346655 wrote: because they are out of date by the time you get them
Agree!
Member 10346655 wrote: also because they tend to cater to the lowest common denominator and don't actually teach you much outside of Y's documentation
This is a very big problem. Many books just cover the intro parts of a technology and really don't take you very far at all.
Member 10346655 wrote: I still refer back to my copy of the *original* Fowler Refactoring book from time to time
Very cool!
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I buy some tech books, but only in digital format. When learning new technology I'll have the book open on a tablet while I work. This is not as convenient as a hardcopy book, it's easy to read but hard to pick through. OTOH, I've always got a 100+ books in my pocket.
Most of my career was spent as a consultant. When I needed a book, I convinced the client to buy it. When I moved on to a new assignment, the book remained the client's property. Which was fine -- I got the book I needed, I didn't have to pay for it, and when I moved to a new assignment the book was either outdated or I was now working in a different technology. On a few occasions I convinced the new client to get the book I had left behind. This strategy was a win for both sides.
Now days when I need to learn a new technology (which is often) I go to SyncFusion and look at their Succinctly books. They are free -- quick primers to get started in a new technology.
Once I have the basics of a technology, I rarely crack books. Online searches work much better for solving problems, but not for learning.
My employer pays for PluralSight, so I use videos sometimes. That's good for an overview, but for hard learning I need to play with the tinkertoys ...
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Great post and a lot of interesting details of your experience with books.
BryanFazekas wrote: When I needed a book, I convinced the client to buy it
That's interesting and amazing to me...that the client would buy them and that they wouldn't necessarily be concerned that you didn't "already know everything". I'm sure this is due to your relationship with the clients.
Way back around 1999 or so a company I worked for bought us a subscription for the Safari Bookshelf. It mostly contained the O'Reilly books which was really great anyways.
I've been a member since then because every book you can imagine is basically available on there.
I am on an old 10 book thing were a book has to stay on the shelf for 30 days but you can cycle them on regularly. It's only $19.95/month and you can read just about any book you will find. There's something like 16,000 books on there and they're fast at adding them.
BryanFazekas wrote: PluralSight, so I use videos sometimes. That's good for an overview,
I feel that same way there. Videos are sometimes more annoying than books because you can't easily find the section of the stuff that you want to learn. I always play pluralsight videos at 1.7x their normal speed.
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raddevus wrote: reat post and a lot of interesting details of your experience with books.
Glad you liked it!
Some clients were a hard sell on buying books, but when I told them that I had no intention of keeping the books, it helped. This way they had a library of books for the technologies they used.
Safari Bookshelf looks interesting, but I don't read enough books to justify the price. It might be a good idea for an employer, depending on situation.
Funny story -- some years back I worked with a guy who constantly bought books and never discarded any. When he moved offices (he was FTE) his books took 40+ copier paper boxes to move. It took him a couple of days to pack his books, move them, and unpack/arrange. His new office was 30' down the hallway ...
I asked him why he didn't get rid of books on ancient technology (well, ancient in IT terms) that he hadn't touched in over 10 years and never would again. His response? "Do you have any idea what I paid for those books??!!!"
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BryanFazekas wrote: his books took 40+ copier paper boxes to move.
Wow!
I used old books for target practice with a .44 magnum. It's quite instructive. We got to see bullet paths through the thick books -- perfect bore through the front (looked like a drill did it) for a couple of inches then rips the back out with a huge hole after the bullet becomes deformed.
Very cool science. Since I had a lot of tech books stacked in front of each other we were able to "capture" the bullets and see how deformed they become.
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raddevus wrote: I think Angular is a big one that is to blame too. Every time I turn around Angular is a completely new release. Now .NET Core seems to be doing the same thing.
I blame marketing in general. Documentation has gone by the wayside in favor of getting out new, flashy releases to make a splash.
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milo-xml wrote: I blame marketing in general.
I agree. If it isn't new in the last 30 seconds then it is old.
If it is old, it cannot be good. 
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Books need more "intelligence".
More / different ways are needed for presenting "learning" content.
E-books only try to mimic real books and not much else.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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