Do you still buy programming books?

Last Update: 31.08.2016. By Jens in Developers Life | Learning

Recently I was browsing on Amazon in the Kindle Short Reads section for Computer Books, and I stumbled on a set of Python Books for Beginners. I checked them out and noticed they all got a good Amazon Bestseller Rank, meaning they were actual bought; much more than many other programming books on Amazon.

That made me wonder.

Do you still buy books for coding topics?

Or does it just happen to be because of they were books for beginners?

The last time I bought a tech book was 1 or 2 years ago in some O’Reilly eBook Sales. I bought plenty, and most of them are still untouched in a folder on a drive.

I have stopped buying printed tech books a long time ago before. They just piled up. A staple of wanted to read books I’ll probably never look at.

When I have a coding problem, I google it. When I heard of new concepts, guess what, I’ll google it. There are plenty of good tutorials on many topics. And when you got a problem, you might find your solution on StackOverflow :-) And I learn more by the code then the text surrounding it.

Interestingly, when I talked to fellow coders at work, I heard the same. All knew the pile of unread tech books and most stopped buying them at all. Are coding books dying?

How do you learn?

I’d like to hear your opinion. Share it.