Holy smokes, $100?!?! You’re not kidding!

I’m always willing to buy technical books. I think it’s valuable to have material from different authors because they each have different perspectives and styles. E.g. CLRS vs Sedgewick vs Skiena. I also like to support the authors. However I’ll take a hard pass at this one.

My ability to level up is rarely due to the quality of the material, it’s more a function of how much time and effort into studying and learning. Time is the limiting factor in almost everything, not learning material.

In other words, learning isn’t about choosing “book A” vs “book B” but rather studying any books vs scrolling through HN, watching YouTube, or any of the other million blackholes of time.

I look at it that I spent $100 on this book, and got a $20K payrise. At that order of magnitude, the difference between spending $10 and $100 didn't matter.

You didn’t get the pay raise because spent $100, you got the pay raise because you spent hours, days, months.

It’s time, not money, you are spending.

From that point of view the $100 for the book is even less relevant.

I've been looking on brushing up on my SQL lately and have been going through these resources.

- Practical SQL, No Starch Press. ($30)

https://nostarch.com/practicalSQL

- Use The Index Luke ($15)

https://use-the-index-luke.com/

- Database Systems Concepts & Design by Georgia Tech on Udacity (free)

https://www.udacity.com/course/database-systems-concepts-des...

I can easily pay the $100, I cannot easily find more time, especially when there are a bunch of other things I'm spending time on. At a lower price I would likely buy the book "just because".

They sound good, too. Be good to hear a review if you get any of them.

The eBook bundle is $49 which is perhaps a little higher than average but doesn’t seem unreasonable.

For a pdf that doesn't come with the data for exercises it's borderline insulting.