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Discussion on: 20 Most-Recommended Books for Software Developers

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culagovski profile image
𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕘𝕠𝕧𝕤𝕜𝕚

So even if a book is only "12.5% recommended", it means that, on average, 1 out of every 8 developers has read that book and recommends it to other developers.

It means that 1 out of every 8 people who published the lists you chose recommends it. Not the same thing.
Good list, anyway.

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awwsmm profile image
Andrew (he/him)

Yeah that's fair enough. If you assume that the reading habits / taste in books of developers who write these lists aren't significantly different from those who don't, though, then they're a representative sample of the whole. Maybe I should put the word approximately in there somewhere...

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culagovski profile image

Not to pick nits, but I assume that the kind of people who write this kind of lists read a lot of programming books, probably more than non-list writers. So, again, the 1/8 and such only really applies to the list writers, not devs as a whole. As a sample, it might be representative of which books are more popular, but not of the absolute amount of non-list writers who have read and recommended the books.
I still like the article, though.

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