Ask HN: How do you read programming books?
1) Make sure you&#x27;re reading a quality book.  Sturgeon&#x27;s Law[1] is true -- 90% of everything is crap including programming books.  Check amazon reviews, forum recommendations for consensus of quality books.  (E.g. many of OReilly &quot;Head First&quot; series of books have cute cartoons but they actually don&#x27;t have quality content.)<p>2) Most programming authors do not write about <i>tradeoffs</i>.  They write about language syntax or library features and end up being (inadvertent) evangelists.  All languages have warts and problems that books don&#x27;t talk about.  To supplement book reading with a dose of real-world realities, always corroborate with forum discussions, stackoverflow, etc.<p>3) Instead of reading 1 book, go through 2 in parallel from different authors.  E.g. read about monads chapter in 1 book and find the same topic in another book.  Different authors explain concepts in different ways which can help reinforce the learning<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sturgeon's_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sturgeon's_law</a>