Do you prefer programming books or online documentation?

[nmadd]

Just curious -

There is no doubt a wealth of information online and I'm certain you could find whatever you needed without ever having to open a book, but I actually prefer a book. I do enjoy thumbing through a paper manual.

You?

[CodedFire]

I prefer books simply because i can read them on the john! having said that ive found i learn more by trail and error rather than sifting through books, too many books and ebooks have unnecessery analogies and waffle to take anytthing from them, still i have read some books that were well written, in fact brad can be fairly concise from the books of his i own.

[GaryMazzone]

I can read them with out being online

[penagate]

Books can be read anywhere. If I can find the right book, I'll take that over online documentation any day. But finding them is a whole other story...

[mendhak]

I cannot imagine any facet or figment of human activity taking place beyond the realm of the Internet.

I mean, online books. Or to be more specific, online tutorials, code examples and quick references.

[Harsh Gupta]

Both. Books helps in understanding the basics and force you to write the given sample code yourself. This have developed in me the sense of writing the entire code (say entire ASPX page) in notepad without the use of Intellisense. Well this is just for learning thing.

Online tutorials can teach you some advanced topics which, finding in a book, is a nightmare.

Edit: Thanks Mendy.

[CodedFire]

On that note, the first thing i do is throw away the code CD's why would you want the code CD's?

[nmadd]

Yeah for fellow book lovers!

[techgnome]

I waste more paper on printing MSDN articles than anything else. For some reason, I prefer hard copies....

-tg

[Harsh Gupta]

On that note, the first thing i do is throw away the code CD's why would you want the code CD's?

I have never used any book CDs.

The point is to write the code yourself instead of copying-pasting.

[RhinoBull]

... For some reason, I prefer hard copies....

-tg

So do I.

[Hack]

Books by an extremely wide margin. I don't have to go online to read them (just take 'em out of the bookcase) and online stuff has a nasty habit of being moved or removed.

[Kasracer]

Both. I love books for when I first start learning about a technology as I can take them anywhere with me and read but once I start utilizing that technology, I stick to the internet and I never look else where unless I absolutely have to.

[Tom Sawyer]

I prefer the internet. Everything that's written in books is available online without having to shell out cash to get it.

[techgnome]

Tom - true, and usually what's on the internet is current, while print can get out of date quickly. But, I think the biggest pro of books is the portablility, and the ability to quickly thumb through several at the same time.... I find that very hard to do on the computer with multiple browsers open.

Now, I see that the Amazon Kindle is available.... I might consider something like that.....

-tg

[Tom Sawyer]

One good thing about books is that you can flip to the inside cover and see the date it was written on. There are far, far too many articles online that don't bother to tell you when it was written, so you don't know how out of date it is or whether it was written based on beta code or something.

Also, if someone can get a publishing company to give him money to put a book together, odds are he has at least a basic knowledge of the subject matter (although I've read more than one technical book that belies that assumption). Any hack can write a blog on something and you don't know how valid any of the information is.

[nmadd]

Two good points Tom. Go books!

[RhinoBull]

... books ... written based on beta code or something...

I prefer books over on-line docs however most programming books are written when betas are out for testing.
Plus lots of them are still based on the previous releases - some new syntax, screenshots...

[Tom Sawyer]

One good thing about online docs is that for most of them, people can add comments about what's written so you can get some feedback on how valid the information is and links to alternate solutions.

For instance, I was reading one article about how CLR stored procedures are superior to T-SQL stored procedures, and to prove this, he had a CLR sp loop through a typed List and for the T-SQL, he had an unoptimized cursor looping through a temp table without any indexes. This led him to the conclusion that CLR sps were far superior and faster.

If he'd been writing a book about sps, the reader might conclude that T-SQL is now an antiquated technology and nothing but CLR sps should be used from now on because they're so much faster. It took the comments at the bottom to let people know that that's about as invalid a test as could be designed and it doesn't tell anyone about anything.

The feedback available on the information that online docs give is often as valuable as the documentation itself.

[Tom Sawyer]

One good thing about books is that you can flip to the inside cover and see the date it was written on. There are far, far too many articles online that don't bother to tell you when it was written, so you don't know how out of date it is or whether it was written based on beta code or something.

To follow up on this, I was just checking out something about sending emails and one of the articles that I found had a big section about what to do if you're using Netscape Mail. I'm surprised that loading that page didn't make the web server's controls crumble into dust, because the thing must have been that old to have that kind of info sitting on it.

[FishGuy]

Mixed, a book is good to have infront of you to reference and glance at whilst still having your IDE up on screen without having to minimize all the time.

Online guides are good if you want to copy and paste some code to test an example.

[nmadd]

To follow up on this, I was just checking out something about sending emails and one of the articles that I found had a big section about what to do if you're using Netscape Mail. I'm surprised that loading that page didn't make the web server's controls crumble into dust, because the thing must have been that old to have that kind of info sitting on it.

You mean Netscape Mail isn't popular any longer? Nuts! I guess I'll go back to using Prodigy.

[Kasracer]

Mixed, a book is good to have infront of you to reference and glance at whilst still having your IDE up on screen without having to minimize all the time.

Dual monitors can take care of that problem

[Pasvorto]

I prefer books for "general" stuff. My 1st exposures to new technologies will always be through books. I can write in the margins, etc. Once I start trying to apply the knowledge, I move to the internet. There is a wealth of information that won't fit in a book (the book would be huge). Plus, forums like these are a God send.

The books will allow me to "set the outline", the online help allows me to fill in the spaces.

[alex_read]

If money was no object, then books all the way (which is what I voted).

However online books & articles I save as they're a cheap way to build up the library & knowlege.