Do you even bother with tech books anymore?
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Anything related to computing : no. It just ages too quickly.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
Yes, computer books age quickly. But then: Maybe computer/programming fashions change (far) too rapidly. I have a good share of old computer books, and every now and then I flip through them, asking myself (because noone else want to listen :-)): Why did we abandon that idea? And this one? How much better is really that new methodology, compared to the four or five preceding it? Some times, there really were good reasons for ditching this or that technique. Surprisingly often, the major "good" reason was that something new had been proposed and strongly promoted. In hindsight (and after two or three even more revolutionary new methodologies) we may have difficulties realizing what was so great about #2. Especially considering the strongholds of #1 that we ditched, which were actually good ideas! #3 wasn't that much of an improvement over #2, and #4 none at all. So fortunately we today have alternative #5 that will really improve things! (At least until #6 comes and tell us that it #5 is old thrash.) Some times, when I point out to some younger guy how we did that very elegantly with now abandoned tools, I am told "We can achieve the same, at least approximately, by doing this, and that, and then this ... no, that ..." Yes, you can. But not with the same simplicity and lucidity. In principle, we could have retained the old stuff, but the developers of #2 and #3 and #4 and #5 wanted to stand out as something radically new, not just another extension to some old stuff. So I do read my old computer books, to recall methodologies, techniques and tools that we let go much too easily. And to better understand the reasons why it was definitely right to let some other techniques go forever.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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I prefer textbooks to be dead tree. I find that learning a new subject from them is much easier than doing the same online. OTOH, when I just want to look up something I use the Internet, like everyone else.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Mostly agree. However, I do like online courses as well. I just perform and learn better with 'dead tree'.
-Sean ---- Fire Nuts
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
I recently had a clear out and relegated "Undocumented DOS" and "MSDOS 6.0", plus several others to the garage. They'll probably just get trashed as I can't think of anyone I know who'd want obscure details of a system nearly 30 years old! In fact, I can't remember the last time I actually looked at a tech book for information...
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
I recently purchased Code by Charles Petzold, but that is only for personal amusement. The last programming book I actually got any use out of was the manual for Turbo Pascal - now that was a good manual. For image processing the book Machine Vision Algorithms and Application by Carsten Steger, Markus Ulrich and Christian Weidemann was very useful when I was starting out. A little dated now in the 3D world, but still worth a read.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
I had the idea that the written books would come in PDF or something like that, in a very very economical format, because so many books or courses are generated that the bookstores simply do not sell any more, they all have old books on the counter, so for the programmers It would be great to have a book delivery point somewhere in the city where it could be printed at a low cost PER UNIT (paying minimum copyright), in reality printed books are much better than pdfs for learning.
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Yes, computer books age quickly. But then: Maybe computer/programming fashions change (far) too rapidly. I have a good share of old computer books, and every now and then I flip through them, asking myself (because noone else want to listen :-)): Why did we abandon that idea? And this one? How much better is really that new methodology, compared to the four or five preceding it? Some times, there really were good reasons for ditching this or that technique. Surprisingly often, the major "good" reason was that something new had been proposed and strongly promoted. In hindsight (and after two or three even more revolutionary new methodologies) we may have difficulties realizing what was so great about #2. Especially considering the strongholds of #1 that we ditched, which were actually good ideas! #3 wasn't that much of an improvement over #2, and #4 none at all. So fortunately we today have alternative #5 that will really improve things! (At least until #6 comes and tell us that it #5 is old thrash.) Some times, when I point out to some younger guy how we did that very elegantly with now abandoned tools, I am told "We can achieve the same, at least approximately, by doing this, and that, and then this ... no, that ..." Yes, you can. But not with the same simplicity and lucidity. In principle, we could have retained the old stuff, but the developers of #2 and #3 and #4 and #5 wanted to stand out as something radically new, not just another extension to some old stuff. So I do read my old computer books, to recall methodologies, techniques and tools that we let go much too easily. And to better understand the reasons why it was definitely right to let some other techniques go forever.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
:thumbsup:
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
charlieg wrote:
Going to donate them to the local high school...
I sent a pile of old programming books about 4 feet tall to the recycling bin last year. Most of them in excellent condition. I'm still saddened by that, but I honestly had more use for the space they were taking than the actual books. My local library wouldn't accept any technical book if it was published more than 4 years ago. Snobs. Their loss.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Well for me it is a somewhat different problem. I've switched away from paper books to eBooks; take up much less space and are keyword searchable. Problem is the formatting has gone downhill over the years, to the point some of them are tough to read. I can no longer justify spending over >$30 for a book that was rushed through. And like many others here, once you reach a certain experience point, the internet is good enough for most things. [Tim]
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Without books how will we survive the oncoming nuclear war? - No internet - All DRM things lock up because they can not check our subscription ... ?
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
No matter what I want to study or have a reference for, I look for a good manual. And I have always preferred a good technical manual to all this online crap, most of which is not all that good. The problem with a lot of the online documentation is that much of it is simply a reflection of all the sloppiness that has been invested into our daily lives from having it too good with all the smart-devices and online capabilities that the Internet provides. This is not to say that there aren't any good online sources for technical material; there are (ie: W3Schools) but no online source can provide the quality in depth engagement that a manual can provide. This has also been proven scientifically years ago. I believe the youngest generation of new developers are quite screwed as you have stated since many of them do not have the research skills necessary for our profession...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
I had sent a comment earlier but it was marked as spam. Why? It was a valid comment on the state of eBooks. Can you tell me why it was marked as spam? [Tim]
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
It depends... With the advent of StackOverflow and sites like this, coupled with the decreasing quality of mainstream tech books, I found them to be a waste of money. But... When it comes to more narrow topics e.g. writing kernel drivers or data pipelining, that's where the tech books shine, if you can find one on the narrow subject you seek. Gone are the days of tech books for the sake of the craft, such as Andrew Schulman's Undocumented Windows and its ilk. How I miss those days... Also, I used to love going to tech bookstores to browse books. Not only mainstream store like B&N and Borders, but more focused stores like the McGraw Hill bookstore on 6th Avenue in Manhattan. Sigh...
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Heck I still print out old books (so much ink the office laser printer). Most of the documentation for the C libraries in RiscOS are in PDFs but I can't deal with looking at them constantly from my iPad or the screen, so I print them out, even if it's 600 pages long. Did the same with the SDL 1.2 tutorial (I know I can get it from amazon but they no longer send it with the CD, so I might as well just print the PDF)
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It depends... With the advent of StackOverflow and sites like this, coupled with the decreasing quality of mainstream tech books, I found them to be a waste of money. But... When it comes to more narrow topics e.g. writing kernel drivers or data pipelining, that's where the tech books shine, if you can find one on the narrow subject you seek. Gone are the days of tech books for the sake of the craft, such as Andrew Schulman's Undocumented Windows and its ilk. How I miss those days... Also, I used to love going to tech bookstores to browse books. Not only mainstream store like B&N and Borders, but more focused stores like the McGraw Hill bookstore on 6th Avenue in Manhattan. Sigh...
Stacy Dudovitz wrote:
With the advent of StackOverflow
With the advent of Stack Overflow, I went back to printed books. I do not like to be yelled at, 9 out of 10 times, because I phrased the question incorrectly. Or, my question was answered six years ago, so why do I have to ask it again? Or, ... I don't enjoy being treated as a silly fool, no matter how I phrase my question. SO is the most unfriendly web site I have ever accessed. At least books don't yell at me. Sometimes, a Google search leads me to some useful information at SO, but I never, ever any more ask questions there.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Serious question. I get the "general" nature of development things, but most of the stuff I've seen in the last few years - meh. It's all fluff. Looking at my solid oak bookcase, I have about 40 books of various types on the shelves. In general, I have found the bookcase, my desk (lawyer sized solid oak), and credenza to be horizontal collection devices (think about that). About 1/3 of the books are cooking books - yes I'm getting tired of the tech, I'm seriously done with the tech BS. You youngsters are so screwed. Going to donate them to the local high school... Meanwhile, I'm just amazed at how us techies have moved on. I have not seen decent documentation since my openVMS days - and I KNEW where to find stuff in the large gray wall. Further, it was actually useful. Unlike the reprocessed garbage from MS. The last good book I read about MS was pure code related, but the name escapes me. Pretty sure MS has an idiot AI generating "technical" doc for their products.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
In just the last couple of months, I have spent several hundred dollars on tech books. I probably spend several thousand yearly -- and have done so for the last half century. I own around 20,000 books -- not all tech (around 1/3 to 1/2 were my late wife's books). Unfortunately, most are currently in storage. Just on the bookcases near me, there are probably between 600 and 1000 tech books. These are not manuals, technical documentation, cooking books, and very little has anything to do with Microsoft. What you find on the internet is typically low level, and random stuff someone felt like putting up. But, especially for tech, there is a huge amount that still only in books -- and that is likely to be true for a very long time. Good luck on donating books. I have more than the local public library. There is no way in hell that they would accept my books if I died. They would try to sell some, most of the rest would be donated somewhere like Habitats for Humanity, who in turn would eventually burn them. Fortunately, the tech books probably could be donated to a local public university. They might even take some of the fiction. I suspect cooking books are going to be homeless.
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Yes. Yes I do. In fact, I just bought several books on x86 Assembler, AAarch64 Assembler, Rust, and Python. I prefer having paper in front of me as well as online resources. I also have kept all of my EE books (I specialized in communications systems in the microwave region) and my original notes from college (converted to searchable PDF) which have been more valuable in a lot of cases than online documentation. That's just me though, I'm pretty old school paper and pencil when it comes to engineering stuff. I learn better that way.
-Sean ---- Fire Nuts
Converting your college notes to pdf is a pretty cool move. I hauled a couple of boxes around for a long time containing my college notes and texts. After the first couple of years, I never referred to them again.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.