What are reference books for?

Question

I'm not against books at all but I'm looking at the shelves in front of me full of programming books asking myself why I haven't even opened most of them.

When I'm in doubt, looking for responses or even looking for API documentation I Google or even search StackOverflow or MSDN or some blogs I know that deal with the topic. But the very last resource is standing up and opening a book. And even when I do that I don't find the responses I'm looking for, most of them cover a lot of topics but not in depth (even if they are 1k pages!).

So, what's the point on buying books like "Programming X" or "X Reference" when almost everything there and more can be found in the net in a couple of minutes (books don't even have Ctrl+F!)

On the other side I find that general programming books are very interesting, like books on good practices, testing, planning, etc.

Answer 1

To be honest, I never saw the point in hard-copy books, so I'm with you on this one.

For reference, you don't need books, you have numerous resources on the web.

The only reason you might need books is to take a crash course on a subject you need to dive into quickly. But for reference? No need...

Answer 2

Reference books for specific programming languages, platforms, etc., are, in my opinion, rarely useful. When your language/platform of choice offers a good online API, you can generally find anything else you need by searching the Internet.

Answer 3

A book with a good index can be way better than google for finding what esoteric language-specific features do. e.g. try searching for what := means in vb.net on google and you see my point.

Answer 4

Books are good if you want to quickly find an authoritative opinion on a subject.

If you search the web more often than not you will get

• Ill-informed often wrong ideas
• Partisan solutions
• Marketing propaganda
• Unhelpful detail
• Rants

To paraphrase something I read in the days of Usenet... It has often been said that a thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years would produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, through the power of the internet community, we know this idea is complete rubbish.

Answer 5

There's a time where I just can't look at a screen any longer and like to revert back to pen, paper or whiteboard. Sometimes removing yourself from the computer forces you to digest information in a different way.

Answer 6

Not to mention that most of these books are outdated a few weeks after their release. However some programming books are really useful and should be read. There was a really good article on Coding Horror on that topic:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001108.html

Answer 7

IMHO, there are too many books, too few are really great. This not only applies to programming books.

Sometime they're just trying to sell another book, even if there is already a great book around. But the existing book is a few years old, and it gets forgotten, so they tell another guy to write a new one. A book is a product. And it's marketing and not passion behind many books.

Answer 8

Imagine doing some debugging at a customer's site without internet connection and your only option is Notepad.

You'd be happy those books exist :)

Answer 9

A web search could provide you the answer to your specific question. But reading a book might introduce you to techniques or ideas you wouldn't normally run across.

Answer 10

For background reading - on the plane, in the coffee shop, in the garden.

Different people consume in different ways. A technical reference book isn't obviously useful, but a good background treatise does force you to consume more information than problem solving will expose you to.

Answer 11

I used to share your opinion. However I found out that when I searched online how to do something I only looked for solutions that I knew that exist, event if I never used them. It was only when I could not find the information I was looking for that I stepped into something new.

I use with books mostly to know that this or that technology exists and to read about different approaches to my daily problems, lets face it, when you look online you first want to get things done and them fully understand how it works, because most pages do not explain the why.

Answer 12

The Internet is good for finding quick answers but for more depth use a book, (if you have the right ones to choose from). Also it's easier to read from printed for a longer amount of time than from the monitor.

Answer 13

Although Internet is the best up-to-date reference for every programming language and you can find PDF versions of almost every book I use to buy the books. Why? Many reaons. To read it in the plane, and so on but the main reason is that somebody has written this book, has invested his time, wrote examples, tested them and without all this effort the book/tutorial would't exist. I am taking advantage for the effort of writing that book. At least what I can do for the author is to buy it although a copy can be downloaded from the Internet.

Luis