I want to read a bunch of books

[theDoomedOne]

I want to read a bunch of books I have collected together. And ONLY do that for about 1-2 years. Because I'm in a situation where unless I know the knowledge contained in this bunch of books, I cannot get properly on with my life as this knowledge is crucial for me to grow and advance in my career. You get what I'm saying?

I cannot read fast/effectively enough today, because I only have time after I get home from my 8-hours-job, plus I cannot be reading during those 8 hours, meaning that I'm working in the time I should be reading.

My prob is: If I just quit work and decide to read, I might not be able to live due to lack of cash. I have some cash spared up but not enough. MY QUESTION IS: Is there any place/country where I can easily go to just read and do nothing more for about a year or two? Any country where, say, welfare or something is guaranteed for sad people who refuse to work? I know this is sad but I just gotta do this. Perhaps some developing country where it's cheap to live? Any ideas anyone?

[Thomas]

The approach to finding different paths to your outcome (gaining the knowledge you want) is a good thing - however, I wouldn't limit myself to those specific books, or even reading them myself.

Maybe you could find someone who read the books and could tell you the gist in a much shorter time? Or find summaries? Or different books? Maybe you can go on educational leave for some time and get a part of the reading done?

If you restrict yourself to a specific way of getting things done (in this case having two years to do nothing but reading and surviving) you'll have it a lot harder than it has to be.

[sidsavara]

No offense intended, but I think you would be better served readnig while also doing some work to support yourself, however lazy it may be. For example, get a part time job where you can put in maybe 15 hours a week and just do enough to make ends meet.

What kind of work do you do? Could you consult, or perhaps freelance off elance.com, etc? I recently wrote an entry that actually suggests the exact opposite of what you're saying:

Are You Really Working - or Just Using Metawork as an Excuse to Avoid Real Work?

[Peek]

Hi Doomed one,

Just like other forum friend, I too am wondering what it is what you want, that needs 2 years of reading.
-lawyer
-astronaut
-mathematics teacher
-be the new PD guru

It is hard to think of something.

Anyway, you want to go to a country were you can read and get money. Maybe it is an idea to write about the books you have read and post it on a blog or so. Or find an way how reading and earning money combine.

On the other side, I read somewhere that people tend not to take direct action to their goals because they think they first have to get, an degree, read this and that, wait until they are on that stage in life etc.

So I just hope that you are not excusing yourself into indirect action towards your goals.

Regards,
Peek

[theDoomedOne]

Thanks for the replies all.

That idea of half-job sounds good. I should be able to live off that. That would also potentially keep me motivated during the reading, because being alone without meeting people might get me demotivated with time.

To answer your question of where I'm going with this: I have about 20-30 books on my reading list that I just haven't got a good chance to sit down and read yet. These are books on computer-related stuff like PHP,SQL,Excel,C++,Linux,Postfix,Apache,Regex (this could easily be one whole year of reading) and also some material to higher mathematics related stuff (which could easily be one more year in addition). So I was thinking that with this knowledge under the belt I could more rapidly advance in a career either in the software industry or the banking industry (or both combined). Both I'm interested in.

To put it differently: I feel such a reading would be a prerequisite for all good that would follow.

But then as some of you say, I may be going the indirect way... maybe that's just because I have kind of a "fundamental" brain, meaning that I like to get the foundations right before I generalize and use in reality. But like you say, that might be indirect. A more direct approach could be just to start a company and learn along the way... but that's somehow just not me... (or at least not me as I currently know myself!)

Hope you now have a bit more idea about where I'm going with this. If not feel free to ask more.

[Wanderer]

Perhaps the best way forward would not be to read the books, but to get a job in a programming position, or as a math's lecturer, or go to university or college and do the learning there. In the UK you can go to university and 2/3 of what you need to pay will be sorted by the government, you could easily do some of what you want to do there, and the extra third would be covered by a part time job, preferably getting experience in what you want to do. Taking two years out of your life, doesn't sound like a great idea, but if you still want to china and thailand are both cheap places to live.

[Swannie]

Originally Posted by theDoomedOne

I have about 20-30 books on my reading list that I just haven't got a good chance to sit down and read yet. These are books on computer-related stuff like PHP,SQL,Excel,C++,Linux,Postfix,Apache,Regex (this could easily be one whole year of reading) and also some material to higher mathematics related stuff (which could easily be one more year in addition). So I was thinking that with this knowledge under the belt I could more rapidly advance in a career either in the software industry or the banking industry (or both combined). Both I'm interested in.

You won't need to know everything in all of those books.

Seriously. Even the smartest geeks I know, and I know a few, will know the "what" of those books but won't necessarily have even opened them more than once.

Also you'd quickly find that you aren't applying the knowledge, and will forget it. You'd probably get a similar benefit from speed reading each book, and then using them as a reference if you find you need to use that... honestly that's what most people do.

For example, I know about regular expressions. I used them on a maybe 2 weekly basis - but very simple ones. I know what I can do with them, and if I can't remember the syntax, I look it up.

A lot of the knowledge in the books will be transferable. Once you *really* understand a couple of programming languages, the rest are like learning how to cook in a different kitchen - you still have knives, but you need to work out which are sharper, you still have an oven, but don't know how the controls work, etc. Sometimes the kitchen will be very well equipped. Other times you have to learn how to use a microwave for almost everything... but the way you think about it will stay pretty similar.

Maths is another area where understanding what exists is important, but you don't need to know exactly HOW unless you are intending to study further.

If you want to rapidly advance in finance, get a very good engineering degree and work your arse off. Not a path I chose to take, and despite the occasional pangs of jealousy over financial sector pay, I'd take my broader life any day.

[ar81]

Wikipedia is a great place to read.

[Bleicke]

That dude is right. Reading about C++, Regex, Linux, etc. doesn't do ****. You have to practice it! Programming is all try and error and experience.

So get a nice little programming job and make sure to switch around some different projects in your time, not get stuck on a big one. This way you learn more. After 3 months on a project, you know all the tools involved. You can then switch.

Also, how many books do you want to read?!

I read about 1 page in a minute, meaning 60 an hour. If you really want to read like it was a job, meaning 40 hours a week, that would be 50*40 = 2000 hours, or 2000*60 pages! That's a whopping 120000 pages or 400 average books (300 pages each). Nobody can remember that much information without using it.

[LostJohnny]

As others have said, there's no point just reading about PHP, SQL, Excel, C++, Linux, Postfix, Apache, Regex - you have to practice them.

I'd suggest you get another computer - find a cheap one or even beg an old one for free, install Linux on it, install Apache, learn to write your own HTML pages, then PHP pages and go from there. Same with C++. If you do it all on Linux it's all free (Excel, of course runs on Windows. But the same applies - learn to write your own macros - it's about developing skills, not reading to acquire knowledge).

All the documentation you need is available on-line for free as well. Having said that, it's nice to have some good books to hand. I still need to reach for my dog-eared copy of Kernighan And Ritchie for the order of arguments to fgets etc.

Graham

[LostJohnny]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

Programming is all try and error and experience.

I remember a time when great care was taken to ensure programs worked pretty much first time.

In those days the documentation told you everything you need to know - not like programming Windows where you have to search the online self-help groups to find a post telling you what the documentation doesn't.

And systems were backward-compatible. You'd write a program and it would work always. And the program did what you programmed it to do, rather than doing different things depending on the environment - i.e. there was no PHP.

And the greatest effort was in developing the program itself, not trying to cope with the infinite number of configurations of middleware that might be on a destination machine.

[/rant]

Do I sound like Grandpa from The Simpsons?

[Lauxa]

Hey there DoomedOne,

To learn programming you have to do it, but without experience it is hard to find a job doing it. I think employers will not care so much which books you have read but they will want to see a portfolio of projects you have worked on.

I'm in a similar place because I want to move into a career of web application development. For me that means PHP, mySQL, and Javascript. So I have been developing my own web application part time (about 10 hours/week) for the last year using PHP and mySQL. The first version I did not worry about being perfect or using all the best practices, I just focused on learning the languages and getting something working. Now I am going back and revising using OO code with Zend framework and Smarty templates based on the book Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP, by Quentin Zervaas.

I think you need to be more specific in your goals because "a career either in the software industry or the banking industry" could mean almost anything and to become an highly sought-after expert in your field you need to narrow it down a bit more.

[Swannie]

Actually I'd not suggest starting with Apache & writing HTML from scratch.

I'd do your research about the skills required for the high salary jobs you want. Find the ones which use open source tools - or find the leading open source tools that provide the technologies that solve them, and get stuck in.

Learning HTML from the ground up, then PHP, then JavaScript, and all the bad habits that come from working in the small, will not help when it comes to working in the big of these frameworks - that the high salary jobs WILL be leveraging.

Get confused by Django, Python, Apache, mySQL, JavaScript & AJAX libraries and CSS all at once :-D (Replace Django and Python with the web framework and language of your choice).

Now, these frameworks will appear massively overly engineered when you start. And that's because they are for small apps. But you need to understand how a small app works in them before a bigger one.

Books, of course, will help - they are the map for the territory. But if you don't know what a river looks like, there is no point in looking at a map trying to plan a route, and thinking a river is no-obstacle at all.

[z1freeride]

No, I would stick with the basics first. I taught myself html, css and so on by doing it, not by reading books.

Be careful with "Pinnacle/lofty Goals" doomedOne. I would try focusing on building skills and smaller goals.

[PVince81]

I only read such paper books if there is no computer nearby or when there is a power outage ;-)

The idea of reading complete books maybe comes from school, where we had to learn the whole content of many books to pass the exams. I never liked this kind of approach because I often felt like I don't need it right now and didn't see the point of forcing it into my brain. (copy-paste from book to brain, at the exam, copy-paste back from brain to paper)

I rather prefer the "lazy" approach (in programming, we call it "lazy loading"), which means, only get the information at the time when you really need it.

[Niki]

I would just get an (or a second) education somewhere. Maybe you can go to college and work 50/50 .

[dannielo]

These sort of books don't need to be read like regular books.

You have to practice.

I would suggest viewing Linux, PHP, C++ and SQL as long term goals, read some chapters, do some little applications... And also look for tutorials on the web.

After you learn a little find a job where you can practice. You'll not be paid as a good programmer, but you'll learn more and faster.

Staying in isolation for 2 years just reading this stuff, won't cut it.

[Dedekind]

I have to (partly) disagree with most people here so far.

If e.g. your aim is to learn C++, the best way to learn the language thoroughly is to pick up a good book on C++ and read it from start to finish. This will put good programming practices into your subconscious; plus, you'll be familiar with the whole language. This is a prerequisite for being properly able to know what to look for in all that jungle in the first place once you start on your programming projects. So, at least in the case of C++ (and many of the other items you mentioned), my advice is: Read a book first. Then get busy with programming projects and revise that book and read other books as needed and as you go along.

Same goes with higher mathematics. Actually, the only way to study mathematics is to read books. There is simply no substitute for it. Of course a teacher would be good in case you get stuck.

Those who replied so far: Are you sure you are correct with this read-when-you-need-it thing? Actually it is a good idea in my opinion, but only after you have read at least one book on the subject. Within reason of course; there are exceptions. For instance with Apache, one need not read chapters about Virtual Hosts if one need not use those anyway. But in the case of C++ it's not like that; if you want to be a serious programmer.

Maybe it also boils down to that people have different learning styles.

I do agree however that 2 years is a bit long. How about taking 2 weeks vacation at a time per book/chapters? Then you'll keep your touch with the outside world and won't get isolated for too long.

[Jim11]

There is no reason to read 30 books like that.

Get a job or go to school and focus your time on those materials then. If you know you want a job that needs say.... C++ and Excel, then do a couple weeks on that and practice it on the job and on your own time.

I'm lost as to why anyone would just sit there read 30 of those types of books for an entire year. You need to actually practice it simultaneously if you want to remember it.

If I were to spend 6 months learning greek I am sure I wouldn't decide to follow it up by learning other languages for 2 years.... I"d forget it completely. I would practice actually speaking greek!

I'm pretty sure there aren't any countries who want people to immigrate there to sit around and read books on their welfare system. Should get those ideas out of your head and figure out how you will manage on your own resources.

Unless you have someone who lets you live off their resources (parents), you can't spend all day doing what you want to do unless what you want to do is capable of providing sufficent value to earn a living (ie not just reading).