8 ms·

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easie

I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. The hit rate of finding a good one is so low it's easier to just fudge your way around a problem using some idiom you're already experienced with. Just ambling around the book store earlier I saw a 3 inch think tome around Go programming called Pro Go or something. I opened it and it was a whole book of instructional copy and paste recipes that span 10 pages for a simple problem. Urgh. This is the status quo now and it has been for a long time. I walked out with a book on pure mathematics instead - probably more useful in the long run...

latexr 2y ago
> I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. That’s consistent with the first reason given in the article: > I lay part of the blame squarely at the feet of the technical book publishing industry: > Most programming books suck. The barrier to being a book author, as near as I can tell, is virtually nonexistent. The signal to noise of book publishing is arguably not a heck of a lot better than what you'll find on the wilds of the internet. Of the hundreds of programming books released every year, perhaps two are three are truly worth the time investment.
- minkles 2y ago
  The problem is that they're written by developers. And when I say developers I mean developers, not engineers or authors. Everything is about a sausage factory, nothing more. You don't learn stuff other than copying and mimicry. And some of it is absolute monkey excrement. But when you don't know better it feels like you are learning something good. I am considering writing a bad programming book on purpose. I will call it "how to sling together a badly written Go 'enterprise' app and smear AngularJS over the top"
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    Nah, the worst ones are the ones written by authors, but who aren't developers. Especially the ones that are authors that just write a book for every new trendy language but never get to the point of actually using those languages themselves.
- jonbodner 2y ago
  I’m the author of Learning Go from O’Reilly, so I might be a bit biased. What I’ve found is that different publishers put different amount of effort into producing good content. O’Reilly is almost always excellent. Others are less so. It’s hard to find a dev who is willing to invest a year of their life to write a book that is likely to make almost no money. It’s doubly hard to find devs who write well. Given these filters, two or three good programming books a year sounds pretty great.
  - rrishi 2y ago
    what a coincidence! i am reading your book now and thoroughly enjoying it! Learning Go's quite good to get dangerous with Go quickly, so good job!
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
Many are outdated by the time they hit the press. I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. Typesetting is awful too, as you mentioned. A single paragraph for something dead simple is spread over multiple pages. Nothing against such authors; its fruitless to hit a moving target. Books on programming languages are the only ones I purchase these days, for those reasons. The Go book, Rust Programming language, Stroustrup's books on C++ etc are quite good and worth owning, but those are exceptions rather than the rule.
- tdeck 2y ago
  > I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. This says more about React than it does about the publisher.
  - biofox 2y ago
    Churn in the software world is out of control, and I have no idea why we accept it.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
      It's funny because at the end of the day it's still all just instructions on a CPU. Computers essentially haven't changed in half a century. What the biggest change between then and now? Multi-core processors?
      - Clamchop 2y ago
        I'd say GPUs and the things descended from them and how they're being used now is a pretty big development. You can still be reductionist about it, but it feels materially different from the mundane calculations and algorithms that sprung to mind when I read your post.
        2y ago
djaouen 2y ago
[flagged]
geph2021 2y ago
That's exactly the author's point: Most programming books suck. Yet he has some recommendations: But I do have this call to arms: my top five programming books every working programmer should own – and read. They are: Code Complete 2 [1] Don't Make Me Think [2] Peopleware [3] Pragmatic Programmer [4] Facts and Fallacies [5] 1 - https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/codihorr-... 2 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321965515/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321965515/codihorr-2... 3 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/codihorr-2... 4 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/codihorr-2... 5 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321117425/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321117425/codihorr-2...
layer8 2y ago
There’s always LibGen and friends if you really can’t afford much, or to sample before buying. You can also get used copies cheaper. The pricing shouldn’t keep you from reading.
anthk 2y ago
From Mark Burguess I'm reading: - The Unix Programming Environment (not that one; this one it's a bit more modern). You'll get a bit of Perl instead of AWK, but it's fine. - The GNU C Tutorial. Not as good as 'The C programming language'; but still useful. - A shot Introduction To Operating Systems. Slightly outdated C++, because most of the time the issue it's just about fixing the include headers. Most of the things learned there will work as is as Perl5, ANSI C/GNU C and so don't change a lot over time, if any.
dayvid 2y ago
The really good books are REALLY good, though. But the only places I've seen them were at university bookstores (and even then mainly MIT/Stanford) or Amazon when they had physical stores. Otherwise you have to get them online
yimmothathird 2y ago
I saw an HN thread a while back where someone recommended a comprehensive book on some networking subject. I'm sure it was a good book, I was floored when I saw physical copies being sold fucking $700. Unfortunately, a lot of the technical books I wish to read fall into this grift of academic texts.
dkwr 2y ago
And then you also have the books which cost 60€ and aren't even printed in color. I mean it makes sense for ecological reasons, but I can get books for 19€ that are colorized. It would be a much better reading experience if some boxes would actually show colorized instead of different shades of grey.

latexr 2y ago

> I don't read programming books any more because they are mostly shit or expensive or expensive and shit. That’s consistent with the first reason given in the article: > I lay part of the blame squarely at the feet of the technical book publishing industry: > Most programming books suck. The barrier to being a book author, as near as I can tell, is virtually nonexistent. The signal to noise of book publishing is arguably not a heck of a lot better than what you'll find on the wilds of the internet. Of the hundreds of programming books released every year, perhaps two are three are truly worth the time investment.

minkles 2y ago
The problem is that they're written by developers. And when I say developers I mean developers, not engineers or authors. Everything is about a sausage factory, nothing more. You don't learn stuff other than copying and mimicry. And some of it is absolute monkey excrement. But when you don't know better it feels like you are learning something good. I am considering writing a bad programming book on purpose. I will call it "how to sling together a badly written Go 'enterprise' app and smear AngularJS over the top"
- Suppafly 2y ago
  Nah, the worst ones are the ones written by authors, but who aren't developers. Especially the ones that are authors that just write a book for every new trendy language but never get to the point of actually using those languages themselves.
jonbodner 2y ago
I’m the author of Learning Go from O’Reilly, so I might be a bit biased. What I’ve found is that different publishers put different amount of effort into producing good content. O’Reilly is almost always excellent. Others are less so. It’s hard to find a dev who is willing to invest a year of their life to write a book that is likely to make almost no money. It’s doubly hard to find devs who write well. Given these filters, two or three good programming books a year sounds pretty great.
- rrishi 2y ago
  what a coincidence! i am reading your book now and thoroughly enjoying it! Learning Go's quite good to get dangerous with Go quickly, so good job!

nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

Many are outdated by the time they hit the press. I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. Typesetting is awful too, as you mentioned. A single paragraph for something dead simple is spread over multiple pages. Nothing against such authors; its fruitless to hit a moving target. Books on programming languages are the only ones I purchase these days, for those reasons. The Go book, Rust Programming language, Stroustrup's books on C++ etc are quite good and worth owning, but those are exceptions rather than the rule.

tdeck 2y ago
> I recall a few years back, Packt et al would publish like "Modern React" or something, with examples that wouldn't build by the time the book was out. This says more about React than it does about the publisher.
- biofox 2y ago
  Churn in the software world is out of control, and I have no idea why we accept it.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    It's funny because at the end of the day it's still all just instructions on a CPU. Computers essentially haven't changed in half a century. What the biggest change between then and now? Multi-core processors?
    - Clamchop 2y ago
      I'd say GPUs and the things descended from them and how they're being used now is a pretty big development. You can still be reductionist about it, but it feels materially different from the mundane calculations and algorithms that sprung to mind when I read your post.
      - 2y ago

djaouen 2y ago

[flagged]

geph2021 2y ago

That's exactly the author's point: Most programming books suck. Yet he has some recommendations: But I do have this call to arms: my top five programming books every working programmer should own – and read. They are: Code Complete 2 [1] Don't Make Me Think [2] Peopleware [3] Pragmatic Programmer [4] Facts and Fallacies [5] 1 - https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/codihorr-... 2 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321965515/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321965515/codihorr-2... 3 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/codihorr-2... 4 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/codihorr-2... 5 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321117425/codihorr-20?ref=blog.codinghorror.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321117425/codihorr-2...

layer8 2y ago

There’s always LibGen and friends if you really can’t afford much, or to sample before buying. You can also get used copies cheaper. The pricing shouldn’t keep you from reading.

anthk 2y ago

From Mark Burguess I'm reading: - The Unix Programming Environment (not that one; this one it's a bit more modern). You'll get a bit of Perl instead of AWK, but it's fine. - The GNU C Tutorial. Not as good as 'The C programming language'; but still useful. - A shot Introduction To Operating Systems. Slightly outdated C++, because most of the time the issue it's just about fixing the include headers. Most of the things learned there will work as is as Perl5, ANSI C/GNU C and so don't change a lot over time, if any.

dayvid 2y ago

The really good books are REALLY good, though. But the only places I've seen them were at university bookstores (and even then mainly MIT/Stanford) or Amazon when they had physical stores. Otherwise you have to get them online

yimmothathird 2y ago

I saw an HN thread a while back where someone recommended a comprehensive book on some networking subject. I'm sure it was a good book, I was floored when I saw physical copies being sold fucking $700. Unfortunately, a lot of the technical books I wish to read fall into this grift of academic texts.

dkwr 2y ago

And then you also have the books which cost 60€ and aren't even printed in color. I mean it makes sense for ecological reasons, but I can get books for 19€ that are colorized. It would be a much better reading experience if some boxes would actually show colorized instead of different shades of grey.