Books are your friend…

I am new to many things involved in the development world. Lucky for me I get to go to a job where they pay me to learn stuff, not just know it already. Many times I find myself turning to the web for information.

Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is a valuable source for info from your peers, but keep in mind that there are all kinds of people writing down their opinions.

They could be newbie idiots like myself!

A couple of hints:

• Check the date on the article or forum post you are reading
• Check multiple sources because I have looked at forum posts that were using code examples that were old or just retarded.

I always refer to w3schools.com for quick reference for things like SQL, javascript, and XML. The Internet is great to have at your fingertips but nothing really beats a well written and researched book.

In my previous post I talked about a memory leak in a .net method. The only place I found the information on the problem was in a book called The .NET Developer’s Guide to Directory Services Programming (Amazon Link).

This is a very specialized area and sometimes it helps just to pick up a book and read it on the can instead of getting little tidbits from the forums. I advise all new developers to do this. Then we can have more people with more complete knowledge and ultimately less shitty applications.