Totally agree, and I'll piggyback this to say that the quality is not always too important either. Worrying about whether the book you are learning from is "the best" is not as productive as getting on with learning the language. A book really only has to good enough not to teach bad habits or explain concepts incorrectly.
75% of all Perl books teach bad habits and explain things incorrectly. I didn't use the word "shit" up there lightly.
I guess Perl is kind of a special case :) I got up to speed by reading half of some fairly old Perl book, then reading most of Modern Perl.
You'd be guessing badly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12036826
I've also had similar experiences with Java, nevermind Javascript.
It is an utter and simple fact that due to tech being an everchanging landscape, any book more than a few years old is going to teach bad habits or explain concepts incorrectly.
>It is an utter and simple fact that due to tech being an everchanging landscape, any book more than a few years old is going to teach bad habits or explain concepts incorrectly.
Concepts change meaning and good habits turn bad every few years?
Shitty books are shitty, OKish books will be probably be fine for a language intro, even if they are old.
That's why I like old books at libraries. They were from a time where the research / book ratio was better. People in research centers didn't write about trivial stuff. That's why math is so nice (when you can parse it), very general and aiming at timeless.
Re:Freely available programming books
by ternaryoperator on Tuesday July 05, 2016 @04:26PM
(#12039310)
Based on Sturgeon's Law [1] then, Perl books are doing fairly well.
Seek for stimulation and keep growing. Cheers.