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I certainly grew up BG. Furthermore, friends label me as a squirrel, stuffing away nuts everywhere.
Then: I am surprised myself how often I go down in the bookshelves in the basement to dig up some information - quite often because I have mentioned some mechanism or algorithm or architecture or tool to a younger colleague, one that was developed and used long BG, and little information is available on the Internet.
Today, I am using Google heavily, but it certainly is best suited for reference information, stuff that you more or less know in advance but need the API details etc. You don't learn the philosophy of a paradigm by googling, not even architectural concepts. You find no wisdom in Google, only facts.
So I still buy books, to more easily "see the big picture". But, just like others are dissatisfied with online tutorials, the art of writing good textbooks is also deteriorating. I frequently wish I had an electronic, editable version of the book I am reading so I could remove all that chitchat that expands 200 pages of useful info into an 700 page monster. Remove all the references to how it is done in this and that old system (which I never used), comparing it to how it is in this system. Adding a few explanations about why you would use this and that mechanism, and for what.
I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture". Yet, for subject I do not know at all, but need to learn thoroughly, they are still a lot better than a google hit count of 2.3 million, where you still miss out a lot of good references because you are so new to the subject that you do not know which are good search terms.
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Member 7989122 wrote: I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture"
Take a look at the O'Reilly pocket guides and references. They're actually quite good at showing you the basics that you need to get started with a technology.
Software Zen: delete this;
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What is funny is how badly a new technology tends to be covered in books when it is new. After a while, you read the books and go "this is so much better". I'm thinking of Group Policy at the moment.
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One specific problem: Those who have recently learned a new technology well enough to write a book, too often write as if the reader has lots of experience with older technologies. E.g. you buy a book to learn WPF, and the athor makes hundreds of references back to Windows Forms, essentially describing the differences, not giving an independent description of WPF as it appears to a reader who never worked with Windows Forms.
Or, athors who have been deep down in the inner workings of the lower layers, assuming that every reader has a comparable background. Like explaing the semantics of C# mechanisms by referring to the CIL constructs generated by the compiler. I did not know CIL details until I "had to", to understand this author's explanations, but I have seen several similar intermediate languages, so to me, it was OK. But a reader who has never been inside a compiler, I guess this would be a barrier.
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Hmm. I may be a crotchety old fart here, but I still keep my books. My active library here at work includes the following titles:
The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie
The C++ Programming Language 3rd edition by Stroustrup
Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform by Troelsen
Pro WPF in C# 2008 by MacDonald
Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats by Murray and VanRyper
Internetworking with TCP/IP, volumes I, II, and III by Comer and Stevens
The Bar Code Book 3rd edition by Palmer
plus a collection of the O'Reilly pocket guides/references. I keep these books because some of the them are out of print or current editions have omitted information I still need. In all cases I still use them. For example, I recently spent a couple of months with Internetworking with TCP/IP volume I open on my desk while I was debugging the TCP/IP 'stack' in a piece of embedded software.
Besides, the monasteries will need paper books after the Singularity and the monoAI has taken all programming information into itself.
Software Zen: delete this;
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When i was in tech support i learned from a guy who was about to retire. I used to ask him how they did the job before google, but he'd always shut me down with an angry "Hey!" like he didn't want to talk about it.
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My 10c worth: We expected to, and were expected to, know not only what to do, but why to do it exactly that way. Or stated differently: We knew the inner workings of the mechanisms we used. Always make sure that you are familiar with the layer immediately below the one you are working on! (You can't go all the way down to the transistors, but go at least one level down!)
Of course that required resources and efforts (and use of books with thorough explanations), but it paid back: We made much more "good" and "correct" use of the mechanisms offered.
Younger colleagues are usually very good at telling me that "the second parameter should be 4". So what does that 4 mean? Why not 3 or 5? No idea, but that's what is used in this code snippet I found when googling, and it works with 4, not with 3 or 5! ... I am never satisfied with that kind of "coding by trial and error", but I see a lot of it around me. If it works, don't ask how it works! When my younger, "helping" colleague has left, I start searching for explanation of that second parameter - if necessary, I buy a book.
This is of course not a real example. Real examples would be like how OO languages have implemented abstract classes, multiple inheritance etc. How interrupts work. Locking mechanisms. Switch statements...
When you know the inner workings, by heart, to a much larger degree you need not google up that code snippet to tell you "for some reason it works with 4". You would know why 4 is the right value.
About 25 years ago, I participated in an EU project focusing on "Just In Time learning": If information can be fetched when you need it, you need not spend time learning it. We can save lots of resources spent on educating people that way. People may be deaf and dumb if we can give them what they need when they need it, more or less as list of detailed instructions. ... Obviously, the EU project didn't say that they wanted people to be deaf and dumb, but that is what I saw in their philosophy. (So why was I in that project??) That project never made a great success, but Google more or less provides information in the way that the EU project was talking about.
Pick up some information about Bloom's model of learning (usually referred to as "the Bloom Taxonomy"), structured in levels from plain repetition up to critical assessment. Information you fetch through google doesn't go very high on the Bloom ladder: You see information reproduced and rephrased, but even the level of comprehending it is poorly supported by google. You can see small elements of application of knowledge (like code snippets showing that it works if the second parameter set to 4), but that doesn't count as "applying knowledge" when there is no comprehension. Forget about the analysis, synthesis and assessment levels; you could in principle find elements of it by googling, but that's not how people google.
(You might find some on the Internet, such as the TED talks and publicly available university lectures, but that is something else than googling!)
So I am a little worried. My generation considers an "expert" to be someone who master even the highest Bloom levels of his field. The Google generation are experts at the two lower levels, and they handle the third level reasonably well. ... Of course: University graduates fare reasonably well at level 4 and 5, at least in subjects they treated as students. But for new subjects, I see them revert to level 3. We did not, because we didn't have google, so the only way to do level 3, applying, was to get a textbook that also gave us strong elements of the analysis and synthesis levels, maybe even assessment.
And that is how we managed without google.
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Nice... And they think they understand it.
Yeah, I'm writing my fourth book about a complicated subject and wonder if anyone will read any of them. Genetics For A New Human Ecology
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Some may have long answer. Mine, books + a whole lot frustrations.
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I'll use WPF as an example of why 4" thick programming books can still be useful. I bought and read one when first learning WPF to get an understanding of all of the features. However, while coding it's quicker to find a snippet online than it is to look it up in the huge tome. If I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't know what to Google!
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LOL!!! 
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They should consider ePub hunh?
Possibly hit youTube up for the equivalent; don't always need to switch to Geico to save a lot of money.
I was unaware of that...
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Is Yogi's picnic basket loaded for bear?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Let us paws and consider:
If Yogi were Irish and consumed the basket's contents, would qualify as hyberniate?
Don't scowl; just grin and bear it.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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If Yogi were Irish, you are sure to find a bottle of whiskey in the basket.
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And what finer way, along with a lusty Colleen, would you want to spend a fine day in the woods?
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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He's too grizzly to do something like that.
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And is Nagy's one loaded of beer?
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I think you made a Boo-boo, it was picinic baskets Yogi wanted.
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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BOOM!
You got it, @Lopatir!!
The best way to improve Windows is run it on a Mac.
The best way to bring a Mac to its knees is to run Windows on it.
~ my brother Jeff
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Only a true basket case would ask!
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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Quote: A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it
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It's indeed a grizzly scene when he's done with said baskets, certainly he's no sloth, but he may be bi-polar. Boo-boo's an enabler who seems to panda to Yogi's every whim.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Overbearing, indeed, is the torchbearer's unbearable crossbearing task of bearishly forebearing bearhugs from other upbearers who get their bearings mixed up.
The best way to improve Windows is run it on a Mac.
The best way to bring a Mac to its knees is to run Windows on it.
~ my brother Jeff
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Looks like you've beared your soul, too bad it won't have bearly any bearing on what I believe.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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