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I recall having a similar epiphany about the value of books when you need to learn something new. There’s a tendency to believe that all information is equally
by raganwald 15y ago
I recall having a similar epiphany about the value of books when you need to learn something new.
There’s a tendency to believe that all information is equally valuable. Therefore, an hour spent reading about, say CoffeeScript in blogs is equivalent to an hour spent reading a CoffeeScript book, only the blogs are free, immediate, and more entertaining.
The last bit is the key. They reason that blog posts are more entertaining is the reason to read the book. They are all sizzle, with optional steak. A book has structure, as Avdi notes, and part of that structure is balance between crazy-fascinating things and fundamentals that are not that fascinating at first but necessary for deep learning.
In cliche terms, books contain information that is important but not urgent. Thanks to the social mechanics of blogs and social news sites and retweeting, the blog posts the filter through the firehose are all urgency. Some also contain important topics, but none contain the important but not urgent stuff that is necessary for a complete education. Any blog post or essay with important but not urgent information falls into people’s “read this later” bucket and never gets the upvotes to make the front page of Hacker News or anything else.
So, you will learn things in an hour on the web, and in an hour reading a book, but if your primary goal is a thorough education in something that is new to you, an hour in a good book will serve you better than an hour reading blog posts.
p.s. Alas, my own books at http://leanpub.com/u/raganwald http://leanpub.com/u/raganwald are simply collections of blog posts massaged into book format, and as such they are entertaining but do not provide the kind of structure and “important but not urgent” information Avdi and I are extolling here. For example, my essays about Combinators and Ruby might make you interested in Combinators enough to read a real book about them, but the book won’t actually teach you introductory combinatory logic.
- llambda 15y ago> For example, my essays about Combinators and Ruby might make you interested in Combinators enough to read a real book about them Mind suggesting such a book? :)
- raganwald 15y agoAs has been noted repeatedly: “To Mock a Mockingbird” by Raymond Smullyan. It’s one of the finest mathematics/logic books ever written for the intelligent layman. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192801422?ie=UTF8&tag=raganwald001-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192801422?ie=UTF8&tag=... (Yes, that’s an affiliate code. Strip it out and replace with your favourite charity. “Raganwald" is an acceptable answer for “favourite charity.”)
- rams 15y agoSeems to be out of print on Amazon. Most sellers don't ship to foreign countries. Tough luck for people like me.
- ohgodthecat 15y agoIf you can't find it anywhere for cheaper (like me) buy it from here: http://www.bookdepository.com/Mock-Mockingbird-Raymond-Smullyan/9780192801425 http://www.bookdepository.com/Mock-Mockingbird-Raymond-Smull... They ship to a very large amount of places for free. My only complaint is that because it is shipping from another country it takes a while to get to you and you don't get any tracking codes from them.
- jamesbritt 15y agohttp://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0192801422/ref=tmm_pap_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0192801422/ref=tmm_pa... Some of these places say they ship from the UK, some ship from the USA. One ships from Germany. Does this help?
- ionfish 15y agoHindley and Seldin's Lambda-Calculus and Combinators: An Introduction is pretty solid. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1175709/?site_locale=en_GB http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1175709/?site...
- SkyMarshal 15y agoAgreed. Books are also the result of much more time and effort spent thinking about, planning, and evolving the content, structure, presentation. A book-length collection of blog posts just won't have the attention to detail and completeness that most books do. I also believe books improve one's ability to concentrate, which directly benefits a programmer's ability to get into and stay in flow. Whereas blog posts are, to paraphrase Fight Club, 'single serving' bits of information, reading a book requires (and improves) mental commitment and the ability to shut out distractions and delay gratification for longer durations. I got myself a Kindle for Christmas, and one of the biggest benefits of this little device is that it eliminates distractions like email and makes it much easier to shut out the world and concentrate on reading long, relatively difficult technical papers and books (vs reading them on my computer as I had been doing previously). Amazon really knows what they're doing when it comes to books and reading.
- bhrgunatha 15y agoPlus the amount of editing, proof-reading, fact-checking and all the other overlooked activities that differentiate a book from a blog.
- systemizer 15y agoHowever, you have to careful about reading books on technology. It is very possible that the technology has changed since the book was published. There are some technologies I would read books for and some technologies that I would read the online documentation and blogs.
- avdi 15y agoThere is definitely such a thing as a book that was released too early.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoI disagree. All books are released too early if you think about it. The technology will change rapidly no matter when you buy the book so it's up to the buyer to make sure it's the latest release for the version they'll be working with if a version applies. Let's take nodejs for example. I think it's safe to say that it's new enough to be considered too early to publish if there were such a thing. Even if node changes drastically within the next few months any book about any technology that's worth anything at all (did I say anything enough times? Haha) will teach you the fundamentals about how to get it, set it up, configure it how you want, and get you going with some reproduce able examples. That's really all you need. No book can be expectd to cover every last bit of the technology in great detail. I'd argue that most people learning to program get the fundamentals from the books and maybe some bonus knowledge and the rest we pick up with experience and research. Then you have remember that there's a good bit of time between the writing of the book and it's publishing and then some more time between editions. No book can be current. But it doesn't matter because of why we buy the books to begin with. We learn the ropes from them. Even books about advanced techniques teach you enough about a technology so that in a case where the advanced technique is out of date you can still get what you want done by inferring how you're supposed to do things now based on other data from the book combined with experience and practice. So given all this, I don't think there's a such thing as being released too early and in fact believe all books are released too late. But they're valuable nonetheless.