Hey, here is a thought I realised while buying yet another cookbook. If you buy a cookbook and find ONE recipe that you will like and will be using regularly for the rest of your life, that cookbook was already worth it.
Even if you found zero recipes, that does not mean you wasted time. Maybe if you think in terms of results for that particular cookbook investment, but it is pretty arbitrary way to look at it. What if you tried to measure your return for investment on a single page of a cookbook? For half a dozen coobkooks? For a shelf of cookbooks?
If you continue buying and studying cookbooks, you will find some good recipes in some cookbooks and what you need to look for is the total return on the total of investment. I spent a ton of money on cookbooks but my life is much better for it and I have zero regrets even if many of these cookbooks yielded zero results.
So now back to technical books.
Some of these books will yield new knowledge and some may yield very little or even none at all. You may not know before you buy a book whether it will pay for itself, but you know if the whole business of buying books and learning from them is worth it. I chose to buy and read books even if some of them yield little results because I think I am a better person and a better developer for it. I learned a lot of useful stuff even if I completely ignore majority of everything I read and then forget majority of everything I thought valuable.
This sort of seems to assume that it is at all possible to gain knowledge and experience without making mistakes.
Hiring people who do not perform seems like a profound waste of resources. Doing projects that fail seems like a profound waste of resources. Learning technology that will not be helpful later in your life seems like a profound waste of resources.
When was the last time you found a cookbook where a significant portion of recipes stayed with you for the rest of your life?
Your comment embodies one of the core tenets of what makes a great programmer. Great programmers are comfortable navigating ambiguity. They make mistakes but quickly correct course. They know how to test ideas in a way that yields signals faster. They know that they need to make mistakes, and know how to keep the cost of those mistakes low.
It’s like being able to walk into a bookstore full of cookbooks, and by skimming a few pages here and there, walk out with 3 fantastic cookbooks.
In other words, good programmers have the ability to quickly understand the full problem space (including business concerns) and efficiently navigate the solution space.
You've just reminded me that o reilly used to publish quite a lot of cookbooks, I think there was a bash one, perl, python etc. That kind of book would probably be quite useful for getting advanced concepts I guess as a lot of more advanced books are quite abstract.
Even if you found zero recipes, that does not mean you wasted time. Maybe if you think in terms of results for that particular cookbook investment, but it is pretty arbitrary way to look at it. What if you tried to measure your return for investment on a single page of a cookbook? For half a dozen coobkooks? For a shelf of cookbooks?
If you continue buying and studying cookbooks, you will find some good recipes in some cookbooks and what you need to look for is the total return on the total of investment. I spent a ton of money on cookbooks but my life is much better for it and I have zero regrets even if many of these cookbooks yielded zero results.
So now back to technical books.
Some of these books will yield new knowledge and some may yield very little or even none at all. You may not know before you buy a book whether it will pay for itself, but you know if the whole business of buying books and learning from them is worth it. I chose to buy and read books even if some of them yield little results because I think I am a better person and a better developer for it. I learned a lot of useful stuff even if I completely ignore majority of everything I read and then forget majority of everything I thought valuable.