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How I Read Programming Books (simplyahmazing.com)
11 points by ahmad19526 on Jan 2, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



I do it a bit differently:

Read 0 is basically just thumbing through the book and absorbing its "natural structure"

Read 1 is a regular cover to cover but oftentimes I only pick specific chapters that looked interesting from R0. Important: With pencil and marker in hand to highlight interesting stuff. I selectively pick examples and exercises and work through them. At the same time I start building a mindmap on the topic (I use FreeMind). If the language has a REPL I usually play around a bit and copy/paste interesting building blocks into the map.

"Read" 2 is working through a bigish project I made up+additional internet research. Always growing that mindmap.


That's a really interesting way of reading a programming book. I think one thing on the back of my mind w/my reading style is I want to know as much about the language at any given time so that if I wanted to spin up quick code to do something I don't have to research for it.

I also have this question in the background, if i was at an interview and I had to use this language, am I fluent enough to get around w/access to search things?

I'm going to download mind map and try your way of learning things, I may like it more. It seems to be quicker.


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