Jun 2 2008

I Don't Read Programming Books - What Am I Missing Out On?

Not only am I not learning, I'm forgetting stuff I used to know. Of Jeff Atwood's list of 16 recommended books for developers I have read zero. Ditto this list of Top 20 Programming Books. Searching though Amazon recommended programming book lists also yielded no hits.

When learning a new software development technology or idea I have always turned to the web. Blogs, articles, open source projects and so on, leaving the books I read largely to fiction.

What am I missing out on? Are blogs and other online content enough or will reading The Pragmatic Programming (common to almost every list) make me a better software developer?