Do you prefer to read/reference your technical books in print or digital form?

Question

Wondering about stack overflow's reading habits. Feel free to include other interesting quirks. For example, if you have your own search engine for this purpose!

Answer 1

I personally when I am coding or working on a project stick to mostly online references since they are so handily available.

However, when a new technology comes out and I am interested in getting a good primer/brief on the topic I cannot deny my passion for a hard copy to sit on the porch (or anywhere outside the realm of a computer) and just read through the content to get familiar. Not to say that I wont take the book back to the computer to try a few things out every now and again.

Another aside, technologies that have been around awhile usually have just as good of free online references as those you can purchase, whereas new things I have found better quality material at first in a book.

Answer 2

For me, it largely depends on the subject matter and the intended outcome. Since I've already learned enough programming languages, picking up news ones is fairly easy and I can just peruse pages on the Internet to pick up the knowledge. This is true for language reference as well. For example, if I'm doing some python programming I'll have a tab to the python documentation open (one quick Google python <modulename> away). In that regard, I'll intake it in digital form.

On the other end, if I'm learning something new or in-depth, I'll want it in hard copy. Partially because books often are more canonical than a hodge-podge of online pages. Right now I'm reading Smith & Navi's Virtual Machine book. Sure, there is plenty of information online about VMs, but this gives me a broad, in-depth knowledge on the subject before getting random web pages about the topic.

In the same realm, I'll read technical papers as hard copies. This is so I can easily take notes in the columns, circle references I want to look up, and highlight relevant passages.

Answer 3

This may sound corny but used to hate hate hate reading any books, but now that I have my Kindle app on the iPad, I really enjoy reading (and flagging the good stuff) via eBooks.

I have honestly learned more here on So in the past 6 months than I have via eBooks, but it's slowly beginning to balance it's self out.

Basically, If I need a quick reference or just a little "boost", I'll definitely hit the SO or the GOOG before cracking the spine on a book (or powering up the iPad). However, when I'm getting into something new (right now I'm digging into ASP.NET MVC), then I'd rather read a book while I'm away from my desk... in bed, on the can, etc.

Current Book is Professional ASP.NET MVC 2 (Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, Jon Galloway)

Answer 4

My personal setup is currently a fullscreened xpdf running on a hot CRT monitor (Until I get more LCDs) so I can look back and forth without switching windows.