Why I Don't Read (Programming) Books

Since I started programming I have not found books useful. There are a few reasons. I shall rant about them below.

I don't read books.

Reason 1: By the time a book is printed it is already out of date.
Technology is changing so fast these days books cannot keep up. Sure, there are some things in programming that don't change much. However, all of that content can be found online already (see reason 2).

Reason 2: Everything can be found online (for free).
RTFM (Read the f%@#ing manual) has now been essentially replaced with GI (Google it).
Granted the acronym is not as good now, however, the information is now much easier to find.

These days, instead of having a printed copy of the Javadocs, you can simply google them.

Sure books are good reference material. But the internet is better. The only requirement you need to make the internet a better tool than a book is good searching skills. Luckily, google makes easy to be good these days.

People who grew up in an age before the internet needed books. The book was the only reference there was. It may be hard to realize that there is so much great information on the internet without trying to find it. If people always go to their book to look up a quick reference thing, they will never see all of the quick information that is available on the world wide web.

With the vast amount of information available online, why would anyone want a book?

*Obviously, if you don't have an internet connection, a book will be much more helpful than the internet.

I don't like reading books.

Reason 1: They are filled with things I don't want to know.
Programming books these days are huge. Not only does it take forever to parse through such a large amount of information it is terribly difficult to do well. The books may have information that I may want to learn eventually; however, they most definitely have information that I don't care about right now.

Reason 2: The information is restricted to one page.
Often times the best way to describe something can't fit on one page. Unfortunately books have to work around that. Drawings are scaled to fit in a small page, or worse, broken up int multiple pages. Reading programs that continue from one page to another is worse than finding a 100 line method somewhere. It is just bad practice. But, books can't always help it.

Reason 3: Programming needs to be done, not just read about.
Sure you can open a book next to your keyboard and read while you type. But that's just really hard. The big books never want to stay open and you have to keep looking back and forth from book to screen. It is just unproductive. I'd rather use the internet.