My personal story instead is that I had always been convinced that books were useless in software or web development, that everything you needed (and had to do) was read the specifications, standards and official manuals (I dropped out of college very early).

After a few years, when trying to figure out a new thing, I conceded to turn to some book and a world opened.

Along with the discovery of O'Reilly's, and then other publishers', late shop of drm-free PDFs (which also solved the serious space problems I would have had with paper books), I went on a e-books binge, from software craft to every conceivable CS field.

I am scared to estimate how much I spent, but I'm reasonably glad of what I learned and what I have at hand.