4 ms·
Does your bookshelf teach concepts or just tools?
- jcromartie 15y agoI make it a point to only have books that I could see myself reading 10 years from now. This occasionally applies to tools that have almost become concepts in themselves, like C or Unix shell scripting for example.
- seancron 15y agoamyshelton: In the future, you might want to link to the specific post and not just your homepage.
- amyshelton 15y agoThanks for the tip! Will do.
- gte910h 15y agoI don't understand why I shouldn't have books that teach tools: It's transient stuff that keeping in my head isn't as useful as the concepts.
- wccrawford 15y agoI agree. Plus, learning is learning. It's awesome to have the concepts, but if you haven't got the basics to use those concepts on, they aren't very useful. In addition, every tool has a different style and features. Programming Ruby as if it's PHP is not going to go well. Especially if you're collaborating.
- amyshelton 15y agoYes, I totally agree. Learning is learning. But the pitfall is when the learner just learns the tool but misses the concept that generated the tool. I see this all the time. Knowledge and wisdom need to go hand in hand.
- wccrawford 15y agoWell you can't have all 1 or the other. Everything in the world requires balance, and education is the same. You can't have tool-knowledge without concept-knowledge and vice versa. One without the other is useless.
- amyshelton 15y agoIt isn't that you shouldn't have those books. My point is mainly that once you read them and learn the tools, they just gather dust. I just went back and amended my post with an additional sentence. Basically, most of the books that teach tools are read once, Google later. Once I know about a tool, it is usually a lot faster to quickly search for a bit of refresher knowledge than to thumb through the book looking for some specific page.
- gte910h 15y agoSounds like you need a kindle :D I recommend the DX for technical users.
- amyshelton 15y agoFunny you should mention that. I'm definitely buying more electronic books (Kindle app for iPad). Somehow I feel better paying less for the electronic version. But I still prefer a hard copy for the classics. :-)
- gte910h 15y agoIn the process of weeding down our possessions in general, I've been ditching a lot of books. Kindle on the iPad definitely works, however the batteried nature of the device makes Kindle on Mac and Kindle on well, a Kindle, more useful for certain things. I usually actually read on Kindle on iPhone. Real estate costs so much, I'd pay more for ebooks than the dead tree version. That is an expensive bookshelf to keep.