Today: November 3, 2024 7:31 am
A collection of Software and Cloud patterns with a focus on the Enterprise

Software licensing: The value of good books

I have a large budget for books (but thanks to Amazon it doesn’t have to be as big as it could be). Sure it’s true that most of the information in programming books is online and available for free. There may even be substance to the argument that most books are out of date as soon as they hit the shelf because technology moves so fast. Oh well.

I get huge value from books. They save me many hours of time that I might spend scouting around for a snippet here or an explanation there. One of my favorite publishers of technology books is O’Reilly.

For this project I purchased Programming Google App Engine by O’Reilly. It’s a fantastic book so far and covers a lot of ground. Bookmarking, highlighting and so on gives me a quick path back to bits that I’ve learned.

Another book I purchased for this project and for my shelf is Thinking in Java (4th Edition) by Bruce Eckel. I previously read the free downloadable version of his 3rd edition. He provides uncommon depth in his approach, tying Java back into the other languages that inspired it. That context is extremely valuable!

If you have a hard time spending $100 or more on books for a project, just ask yourself how many hours you would have to save in order to justify the cost. At today’s contractor rates that might only be two or three hours to hit the break even point. Across the life of a project, a well written and edited book from a trusted publisher can save you many more hours than that.

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