5 ms·

The problem with a $200 book is that it's hard to tell the difference between a book that contains $100k of knowledge and a book that contains $100 of knowledge

The problem with a $200 book is that it's hard to tell the difference between a book that contains $100k of knowledge and a book that contains $100 of knowledge.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
ideally that's what reviews and word of mouth are. But I imagine like other sectors that book publishers are risk averse. But if anyone is like me and interested in taking a risk on those $80-150 tomes, CRC Press' books have been more hits than misses for me.
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  Do you have any recommendations ?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    CRC has books in pretty much every subject (in and outside of software), so it really comes down to what kinds of topics you are interested in. I can give a dozen recommendation for books in computer graphics, but that may not be helpful for you personally. But if you are are into graphics programming: -Peter Shirley's Fundamentals of Computer Graphics is a great comprehensive resource. Despite the name, it serves as a great jumping off point even for experts into a different subdomain if they don't know where to start - Johnathan Cooper's Game Anim is one of my most recent purachases. A great overview of the animation process, from the views of both the artist and technical engineer. Not just great for concepts but to get an idea of how and where a large studio executes their workkflow in production. - Most of the GPU series from Wolfgang Engel are worth their weight in gold. The 7 or so GPU Pro series is basically whitepapers on all sorts of (at the time) cutting edge rendering techniques. Then the "GPU Pro 360" books are there if you wanted to focus on a specific subdomain instead of looking across the pro books (e.g. a GPU Pro 360 book focusing on Lighting or Image processing)
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
Hey, here is a thought I realised while buying yet another cookbook. If you buy a cookbook and find ONE recipe that you will like and will be using regularly for the rest of your life, that cookbook was already worth it. Even if you found zero recipes, that does not mean you wasted time. Maybe if you think in terms of results for that particular cookbook investment, but it is pretty arbitrary way to look at it. What if you tried to measure your return for investment on a single page of a cookbook? For half a dozen coobkooks? For a shelf of cookbooks? If you continue buying and studying cookbooks, you will find some good recipes in some cookbooks and what you need to look for is the total return on the total of investment. I spent a ton of money on cookbooks but my life is much better for it and I have zero regrets even if many of these cookbooks yielded zero results. So now back to technical books. Some of these books will yield new knowledge and some may yield very little or even none at all. You may not know before you buy a book whether it will pay for itself, but you know if the whole business of buying books and learning from them is worth it. I chose to buy and read books even if some of them yield little results because I think I am a better person and a better developer for it. I learned a lot of useful stuff even if I completely ignore majority of everything I read and then forget majority of everything I thought valuable.
- emmo 3y ago
  This sort of seems to assume that time and money in infinite, though. Buying a recipe book for one recipe seems like a profound waste of resources.
  - onetimeuse92304 3y ago
    This sort of seems to assume that it is at all possible to gain knowledge and experience without making mistakes. Hiring people who do not perform seems like a profound waste of resources. Doing projects that fail seems like a profound waste of resources. Learning technology that will not be helpful later in your life seems like a profound waste of resources. When was the last time you found a cookbook where a significant portion of recipes stayed with you for the rest of your life?
    - 3y ago
quickthrower2 3y ago
No programming book gives me $100k of knowledge. Let’s say the knowledge is 10% of the gain and 90% sweat. I need $1m in lifetime value I couldn’t have got otherwise. If it has that sort of value you build a business around that tech! See OpenAI for an example!
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  Yes, the knowledge in a book does not automatically bring value. A book in itself is worth as much as the warmth it can give when you throw it in a fire. But IMO that's a stupid way to view books in general. You would have to contend that ALL books are worth nothing, because you have to expend effort to read it or try to actually make use of the knowledge in it. So how I define value of a book? From the economics, this would be the opportunity cost which is the next best thing you could do. If you have better use of your time than reading any book then yes, books are worthless to you as long as you can do better things with your time. For me, I found that reading books brings immense value to me by either directly bringing actionable knowledge or by causing me to think in new ways. Yes, these are my thoughts, but I argue I would not have them if I kept my brain just doing the same thing every day. I attribute many hundreds of thousands of dollars of my income to ideas in books that I red and some of these books more than others. I am not listing these books here because I also believe that it is not about these books. It is about me getting value from the ideas that I would not know otherwise.

The problem with a $200 book is that it's hard to tell the difference between a book that contains $100k of knowledge and a book that contains $100 of knowledge.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

ideally that's what reviews and word of mouth are. But I imagine like other sectors that book publishers are risk averse. But if anyone is like me and interested in taking a risk on those $80-150 tomes, CRC Press' books have been more hits than misses for me.

worthless-trash 3y ago
Do you have any recommendations ?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  CRC has books in pretty much every subject (in and outside of software), so it really comes down to what kinds of topics you are interested in. I can give a dozen recommendation for books in computer graphics, but that may not be helpful for you personally. But if you are are into graphics programming: -Peter Shirley's Fundamentals of Computer Graphics is a great comprehensive resource. Despite the name, it serves as a great jumping off point even for experts into a different subdomain if they don't know where to start - Johnathan Cooper's Game Anim is one of my most recent purachases. A great overview of the animation process, from the views of both the artist and technical engineer. Not just great for concepts but to get an idea of how and where a large studio executes their workkflow in production. - Most of the GPU series from Wolfgang Engel are worth their weight in gold. The 7 or so GPU Pro series is basically whitepapers on all sorts of (at the time) cutting edge rendering techniques. Then the "GPU Pro 360" books are there if you wanted to focus on a specific subdomain instead of looking across the pro books (e.g. a GPU Pro 360 book focusing on Lighting or Image processing)

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

Hey, here is a thought I realised while buying yet another cookbook. If you buy a cookbook and find ONE recipe that you will like and will be using regularly for the rest of your life, that cookbook was already worth it. Even if you found zero recipes, that does not mean you wasted time. Maybe if you think in terms of results for that particular cookbook investment, but it is pretty arbitrary way to look at it. What if you tried to measure your return for investment on a single page of a cookbook? For half a dozen coobkooks? For a shelf of cookbooks? If you continue buying and studying cookbooks, you will find some good recipes in some cookbooks and what you need to look for is the total return on the total of investment. I spent a ton of money on cookbooks but my life is much better for it and I have zero regrets even if many of these cookbooks yielded zero results. So now back to technical books. Some of these books will yield new knowledge and some may yield very little or even none at all. You may not know before you buy a book whether it will pay for itself, but you know if the whole business of buying books and learning from them is worth it. I chose to buy and read books even if some of them yield little results because I think I am a better person and a better developer for it. I learned a lot of useful stuff even if I completely ignore majority of everything I read and then forget majority of everything I thought valuable.

emmo 3y ago
This sort of seems to assume that time and money in infinite, though. Buying a recipe book for one recipe seems like a profound waste of resources.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  This sort of seems to assume that it is at all possible to gain knowledge and experience without making mistakes. Hiring people who do not perform seems like a profound waste of resources. Doing projects that fail seems like a profound waste of resources. Learning technology that will not be helpful later in your life seems like a profound waste of resources. When was the last time you found a cookbook where a significant portion of recipes stayed with you for the rest of your life?
  - 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

No programming book gives me $100k of knowledge. Let’s say the knowledge is 10% of the gain and 90% sweat. I need $1m in lifetime value I couldn’t have got otherwise. If it has that sort of value you build a business around that tech! See OpenAI for an example!

onetimeuse92304 3y ago
Yes, the knowledge in a book does not automatically bring value. A book in itself is worth as much as the warmth it can give when you throw it in a fire. But IMO that's a stupid way to view books in general. You would have to contend that ALL books are worth nothing, because you have to expend effort to read it or try to actually make use of the knowledge in it. So how I define value of a book? From the economics, this would be the opportunity cost which is the next best thing you could do. If you have better use of your time than reading any book then yes, books are worthless to you as long as you can do better things with your time. For me, I found that reading books brings immense value to me by either directly bringing actionable knowledge or by causing me to think in new ways. Yes, these are my thoughts, but I argue I would not have them if I kept my brain just doing the same thing every day. I attribute many hundreds of thousands of dollars of my income to ideas in books that I red and some of these books more than others. I am not listing these books here because I also believe that it is not about these books. It is about me getting value from the ideas that I would not know otherwise.