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Discussion on: Books I found at my parents'

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primercuervo profile image
Nicolas Cuervo

Every time I see a list like this I always wonder if people usually read these from cover to cover. I've tried to do so with some technical books about Python and C++, but I normally require more of my freetime than I was planning to give to those books, so I don't finish them page after page but then just skip to the parts I find interesting at the moment.

Most of the people I ask about this use these books as reference, rarely or never ever reading them from cover to cover but knowing them just good enough to know where to look for the thing they need while coding.

Do you read tech-books from the first to the last page?

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rhymes • Edited

so I don't finish them page after page but then just skip to the parts I find interesting at the moment.

I'd say it's perfectly normal. Not all engineers are good writers, some books require a lot of effort just to be comprehended

Every time I see a list like this I always wonder if people usually read these from cover to cover

Do you read tech-books from the first to the last page?

A book like the Cookbook is definitely a reference, but I glossed over all of it the first time, trying to find new tips or new ways of doing things. Like a kid with a volume of the encyclopedia before the internet was a thing :D

Keep in mind that a lot of these books are from early 2000s, when I started programming. In Italy was still a period where most of the country had dial-up connections (ADSL started spreading in 2004-2005), IRC and usenet were still huge, GitHub and smartphones didn't exist, nor StackOverflow and probably my concentration level was better. A book and mailing lists to talk to your peers were probably your best chances to get in depth knowledge of anything.

Right now I'm not that much into tech books.