Why do people lie about resources to learn programming?

[Timmy100]

Sup.

Why do people lie about resources to learn programming? They say to read books and online courses all the time. Many people just throw things at you. They just want to increase their amount of posts. I'm not being rude but why do they lie?

It's insane! People probably just read some pages online to learn things.

[iansjack]

I'm not being rude

Yes you are.

[AMenard]

Another one (sock)...

[dozniak]

They say to read books and online courses all the time.

Books and online courses are a STRUCTURED way to represent certain knowledge. In CS structured way is often the most efficient for consuming vast amounts of interconnected knowledge.

So this is not a lie. This is life.

[matt11235]

I don't understand why you think that people are lying. What's the issue with books and online courses?

They just want to increase their amount of posts.

I don't think that anybody gets paid to post here so this is probably isn't true.

[alexfru]

When I started to learn programming, there was no Internet in Russia. So, the initial info came from two sources: books/magazines and my dad. And when he started, there was even less literature on the subject. Did I say no Internet? I learned a lot through experimentation. You know, tweak the formula here, tweak the loop or condition there, try something undocumented/obscure, etc. With internet came a lot more info. But I spoke no good English at the time. So I had to learn it along the way. I must be lying, right? Now go get your books!

[TightCoderEx]

Many people just throw things at you.

A lot of times, it's in the way you ask the question, but in all fairness I am making an assumption of how you might have asked for advice.

1: Where is the best place to learn C++

2: Where is the best place to learn about STL specifics.

Probably for the most part CPlusPlus would be the most probable answer, but I might direct you to SGI.

The more ambiguous the question, the more varied the replies will be, so it's not a matter of lying, but rather what each of us believes the best resource would be based on our own personal experience.

[dozniak]

Probably for the most part CPlusPlus would be the most probable answer,

Although cppreference is probably betterer.

[Schol-R-LEA]

I might add that different people have different learning styles, habits, preferences, preconceptions, etc., so any blanket recommendation is only going to be useful to a minority of people.

However, the biggest reason people recommend books primarily is reliability: while saying that the quality of books is variable is a severe understatement, they do have editors, proofreaders, publishers, etc. and get reviewed by book critics and domain knowledge experts. Most web sites and online courses get none of those things, and the vast proliferation of web sites by sources both fair and foul means that most aren't familiar to the people making the recommendations.

While there are many terrible books, and many great online resources, the quality of books tends to be more consistent than online sources, at least for stock material that hasn't been subject to revision. Online sources tend to be more up to date, but are more prone to politicking, the Dunning-Kruger Effect (the tendency for people who are ill-informed on a topic to think that they know more about it than they do), unchecked bias, and flat-out lying, than printed material is - not because books are inherently better, but because the bar to entry is vastly lower for online resources.

The take-away here is that regardless of the source, be very careful and skeptical about what you are reading and hearing. Books are, if nothing else, slightly more susceptible to accountability, as really unreasonable works tend not to get carried by publishers, libraries, and retailers.

[Solar]

Books are, if nothing else, slightly more susceptible to accountability, as really unreasonable works tend not to get carried by publishers, libraries, and retailers.

*cough*Schildt*cough*

But yes, in general I agree with you. Books > Online tutorials.

[alexfru]

*cough*Schildt*cough*

I 2nd that! The guy seized the opportunity to make some good bucks (I suppose) but what worked well for him turned out as trouble for his readers. Ain't good. To be fair, he's not the only one guilty of writing books on C/C++ with serious errors or omissions. I read my share of those in the 90's.

[Solar]

I found this list on bad C/C++ books. It's somewhat old, and many of the links are dead, but...

Yes, bad books exist.

On the other hand there is the Definite C Book Guide and List and the Definite C++ Book Guide and List over at StackOverflow, for the other end of the spectrum.

[Schol-R-LEA]

Oh, I quite agree - Herb Schildt was the worst offender of this sort, but far from the only one. However, books do tend to get more careful scrutiny before release, if only because a badly written or inaccurate book reflects poorly on the publishers, and because they are physical object which cannot be re-written once sold - errata can be issued, new editions can be written and published, they can even be recalled (though it really isn't done often enough), but the last two are hideously expensive things with serious consequences for the author and publisher alike. Web sites can be updated without warning, which is great for keeping them up to date but also allows glaring errors to be sent to the memory hole without the readers who saw the first version but not the later ones knowledge.

Like with most things, a blanket statement really isn't going to work. Books are generally more trustworthy, primarily due to the differences in how they are published, but that says little about a specific book. There are plenty of unconscientious (or even seemlingly unconscious) publishers in print, but at least the authors usually had to pass them through someone first.

This isn't to say that web sites - or self-published books - are inherently worse, just that there is a differential aspect to it, one which tends to cause recommendations slanted towards books and journals

I should finally add that both wikis and e-books represent good compromises between print publication through an editor and publisher, on the one hand, and pure self-publication via a web page or self-pub with no external review, on the other.

Finally, fora like this one, or SO, tend to be good for getting highly focused answers to specific questions, provided that the question is itself well-focused (and couldn't be just as easily found elsewhere, as forumgoers tend to get vocally annoyed with repeated questions on basic topics).

Each of these media types have advantages and disadvantages, and each have exceptions to the rules. You need to be prepared to deal with different answers, involving different media, when asking for advice on information sources.

[Love4Boobies]

We're just lying to trick you into being smarter than us but we seem to have failed.

[iansjack]

I'd add that a published book (from a reputable publisher) will have been peer referreed and read and commented on by a number of people before publication. With a web site you just have to take the author's credentials at face value. One important function that publishers provide is to filter out rubbish; there is no such filter for self-published Internet material.

It doesn't always work but it gives you a fighting chance that the material is of value.

I should declare an interest in that I worked for 35 years for one of the world's largest publishers of computer science books.