Frivolous Friday, 05.22.2009: Programming books

Not to be all self-congratulatory and navel-gazing and such, but this past week saw an anniversary of sorts: Namely the fact that I have officially, documentably been a geek for a decade. By which I mean being paid to work with technology--either to write about it or to make it.

What really brought the passing of a decade home, though, was the glance at my bookshelf, and the realization of how obsolete some of those dead-trees are. Some, of course is timeless. K&R's New C Primer Plus sits to the immediate left of Soustroup's classic--jokingly referred to as The Old Testament and The New Testament. The Perl manual that was my going-away present from my teammates at "The Blue Zoo" probably is still relevant. Java Structures is probably conceptual enough to hang on to. And, despite their age, the two Java Books I bought near the inception of my certified geekhood, have been useful references over the years...if only for the rudimentary nature of the UI programming I've done.

But, sadly, although I peek at his blog Monday-Friday, I haven't looked at Elliot Harold's Java I/O since it arrived by mail. Jason Hunter's book on servlets was solid enough that I bought the second edition, but haven't had a use for it (because most hosting companies make you pay extra for J2EE). And I don't think that I'll have much use from the Java 2 Certification, unless it's as a doorstop or I have a fancy to set the chimney ablaze--rather like we did with all the MSCE exam prep books that I received as hand-me-downs. And there are more of their ilk.

Basically, the takeaway is: If you want to feel old and passe, measure your life in terms of computer programming books. Sigh. But the problem is that if I throw those away, there will be bare spot in that bookshelf. Which, of course, pretty much requires me to buy more books to take their place. And that cycle of dead-tree obsolescence is just plain depressing.