This week's book giveaway is in the Agile and other Processes forum. We're giving away four copies of The Mikado Method and have Ola Ellnestam and Daniel Brolund on-line! See this thread for details.
In one of the MD topic,Chris Webster wrote that he has 115 tech books on his shelf. That's a huge number. I have meager 7 books. I am just curious how many tech books you guys have? No need of names,Just Number. Rough number will do fine also.
Remember you have not inherited earth from your ancestor,you only borrowed it from your descendants.
Bear wrote:Good grief, I'm afraid to count them. Certainly, the count would be in the hundreds. And if you count those that I've purged over the years, likely over a thousand.
This is the reason I've switched to eBooks lately. I'm drowning in books (I also have tons of novels, cookbooks, How To books, non-tech science non-fiction, and on and on).
Bear Bibeault wrote:The "purged pile" is large because I have 34 years in the industry.
I still find it as an amazing achievement. I think, most people will give up reading new books when they have few years of experience and from the number of books you have read, looks like you have never lost the hunger of learning new things. And that's the main Accomplishment.
Tushar Bhaware wrote:I still find it as an amazing achievement. I think, most people will give up reading new books when they have few years of experience and from the number of books you have read, looks like you have never lost the hunger of learning new things. And that's the main Accomplishment.
I'm a bit older than @bear, I've been at it about 39 years.
To your point of having experience, you have to realize that this industry is alive. When I started, Fortran and Cobol were popular, and 16K of memory cost $50,000 and took up a complete 19" rack.
There will always be new technologies to learn. I sure would not have wanted to spend nearly 40 years doing vintage 1972 Fortran.
I expect that I'll move on to some better language than Java before I retire.
Its essentially a self optimizing cache. Hot topics, current books are easy arm length. Notice that the Aho, Sethi, Ullman Dragon book is way up on the top shelf.
Tushar Bhaware wrote:
I still find it as an amazing achievement.
Thanks.
I think, most people will give up reading new books when they have few years of experience and from the number of books you have read, looks like you have never lost the hunger of learning new things.
There's a term for an older software developer who doesn't keep up-to-date with new things: unemployed.
Its essentially a self optimizing cache. Hot topics, current books are easy arm length. Notice that the Aho, Sethi, Ullman Dragon book is way up on the top shelf.
For me, it's self-optimized by which pile is closer to my desk.
Bear Bibeault wrote:For me, it's self-optimized by which pile is closer to my desk.
For me, if I don't put them up on a shelf, in an instant, you can't see the top of my desk. When they cover the keyboard and mouse, I have to put them back up.
BTW, love @bear's comment the IT pros who don't keep up with technology are unemployed. So true.
Probably about 100. I read 10-20 tech books a year. But some are borrowed from the library or co-workers. And some were given away or thrown out for being obsolete. I have 59 tech books at home. Plus about the same - maybe a little less - in the office. Some of the them aren't so relevant to my job though.
Tushar Bhaware wrote:I still find it as an amazing achievement. I think, most people will give up reading new books when they have few years of experience and from the number of books you have read, looks like you have never lost the hunger of learning new things. And that's the main Accomplishment.
As Bear and Pat have pointed out, the longer you stay in this industry, the more stuff you have to keep learning so the more books you end up with. Of course, the older you get, the less stuff you can keep in your head, so the more books you need anyway!
As for purging tech books, that's quite hard these days. Technology changes so fast that most software books are out of date within a couple of years, which means nobody else wants them either. I've sold some on Amazon, given some away, but in recent years the only way to get rid of many of them has been to rip them up for paper recycling (at least this is good exercise as the books are fairly chunky) or even burn the darned things. I think I'll have to follow Bear's lead and switch to ebooks in the near future...
Pat Farrell wrote:There will always be new technologies to learn. I sure would not have wanted to spend nearly 40 years doing vintage 1972 Fortran.
When i started this topic,didn't thought that way. Yeah,One doesn't want to spend his life working on one language when there will be new modern language to do stuff easily.
Bear Bibeault wrote:There's a term for an older software developer who doesn't keep up-to-date with new things: unemployed.
new perspective.Thanks.
Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:I read 10-20 tech books a year.
I have about 20 here in the office, and about 20 more at home. I don't move around much (13 years in the industry, two jobs), and they were/are both slow to change. The tech I use now doesn't really have a lot of books - Amazon shows...none (cloverleaf, anyone?).
I've also found that much of the other stuff I need, google is a terrific reference. Several times a day I look up perl, tcl, or shell script questions and find the answer online. No need for a book (at least at the level I work at).
Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Paul Anilprem
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In one of Sherlock Holmes's books (don't remember which one), Sherlock explains to Dr Watson why he doesn't read a lot of books. His logic is that brain is like a room and information is like furniture. So the more you read the more cluttered our brain gets and it become difficult to find stuff you really need. Hence, he reads only the stuff he needs and only when he needs it.
fred rosenberger wrote:I have about 20 here in the office, and about 20 more at home.
Thank you for trying to calm my nerves. But now i am settled with idea of reading couple of hundred tech books.
fred rosenberger wrote:
I've also found that much of the other stuff I need, google is a terrific reference.
There is famous quote from one of bollywood movie "Jiska koi nahi hota,uska bhagwan hota hai". Rough translation would be "those who don't have anyone, have god with them".
For programmers, we use "those who don't know nothing, Google is with them". Google is best friend to beginners like me.
Tushar Bhaware wrote:Google is best friend to beginners like me.
I would caution you though...there is a lot of garbage out there, too. You need to develop the skill to know what is good information and what is bad, and that mostly comes with experience. There have been many times where I would look at the first (several) hits on google and say to myself "There has GOT to be a better way".
fred rosenberger wrote:I would caution you though...there is a lot of garbage out there, too. "There has GOT to be a better way".
Yes i have found out that in one of forum where i mentioned roseindia is a good website and found out that it contains crappy material. Now i also look for quality content,ask my seniors where they look for stuff,hang out more on JavaRanch.
Not that many, and reference books aside, I've not even read all of them. It's hard to pick up a book when you have a PS3 sitting right there, distracting you. Calling you. Pick me, pick me!
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Paul Anilprem wrote:In one of Sherlock Holmes's books (don't remember which one), Sherlock explains to Dr Watson why he doesn't read a lot of books. His logic is that brain is like a room and information is like furniture. So the more you read the more cluttered our brain gets and it become difficult to find stuff you really need. Hence, he reads only the stuff he needs and only when he needs it.
Has this ever happened with anyone here?
No. I find my mind is more of a series of pointers. I remember where I read something so I can find it again Then I just need to retain concepts and not details.
Bear Bibeault wrote:I'll say! I got Dishonored for my birthday (mid-October) and started playing it a couple of weeks ago, and it's really really hard to put down!
(See. I don't spend all my time geeking out.)
Wait...What? Playing video games is NOT geeking out? Since when?
Yeah, but it doesn't impart the same sense of scale or depth, though. Compared to Thief: TDP, Thief 2: The Metal Age and the first Deus Ex the levels are far smaller and the game world and story are less engaging. Especially compared to DE. I still liked it though, lots of fun sneaking around steampunk, plague-ridden city and executing silent non-leathal take downs.
/derail
dennis deems
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Oh, gonna have to give this a try as well! Love me some stealth. Never managed to wrangle a copy of Deus Ex but I like the Thief games and I adore the Splinter Cell series.
Oh and while I have hundreds of books, only about a couple dozen are about computing. It ought to be fewer than that by rights, but I have a hard time parting with books, even books I never finished. There are only about ten tech books I would never want to be without.
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