Wow, and you actually find these books valuable? Any book I read that I truly learn something from usually takes weeks or months to get through. Call me slow but it just takes time for real information to sink in for me. Sure I understand the words, but to fully absorb the knowledge takes time. Reading 200-400 books a year - how do you ever get the chance to absorb any of that information? If you can really learn valuable information from a book in 10-20 minutes than I am jealous.
Maybe business books are just different than technical/science oriented ones.
Business texts and technical books are very different. I read math/science/programming books as well - I'm currently working through Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E.T. Jaynes. There's no way I could grok that book in 20 minutes.
10-20 minutes won't cut it for deep technical material, particularly if the book is designed to teach via working through examples. If you're reading a workbook, then take the time to work through the examples. Choose your workbooks carefully, since they require a more significant time investment.
Most non-fiction books, however, are written around a few simple, straightforward concepts - you can identify them in a few minutes. A few more minutes identifying examples, relationships to other concepts, and counter-examples / edge cases, and you've extracted 90% of the value of the text.
Almost every non-fiction book fits this model. It pays to tailor your reading approach to what you're reading.
As to value - in general, most business books are marginally valuable in isolation. Once you read many of them, however, very useful patterns begin to emerge. Recognizing and using those patterns provides the value.
The short answer: Syntax Error.
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I spend a lot of time working with different languages and frameworks. Though my day job is PHP, I've got an itch to make a mobile game.
Since they're not actually written in PHP, I've got to switch to a new language. ObjectiveC for iPhone, Android-Java, or any number of cross platform languages to pick up a third party framework.
On top of that - there's the issues of structure and stuff.
For learning a new language, there's no way to skim.
HOWEVER for something like an A* pathfinding algorythm (an artificial intelligence method of finding the most efficient path from A to Anywhere) - you can get the "Gist" by skimming a paper. I understand what A* is and how it does it ... but if I want to replicate it I still have to go over it line-by-line if I want to get it right though.
So, I think the short answer is "NO" coders can't skim stuff and get the job done right.
Comments
Wow, and you actually find these books valuable? Any book I read that I truly learn something from usually takes weeks or months to get through. Call me slow but it just takes time for real information to sink in for me. Sure I understand the words, but to fully absorb the knowledge takes time. Reading 200-400 books a year - how do you ever get the chance to absorb any of that information? If you can really learn valuable information from a book in 10-20 minutes than I am jealous.
Maybe business books are just different than technical/science oriented ones.
Business texts and technical books are very different. I read math/science/programming books as well - I'm currently working through Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E.T. Jaynes. There's no way I could grok that book in 20 minutes.
10-20 minutes won't cut it for deep technical material, particularly if the book is designed to teach via working through examples. If you're reading a workbook, then take the time to work through the examples. Choose your workbooks carefully, since they require a more significant time investment.
Most non-fiction books, however, are written around a few simple, straightforward concepts - you can identify them in a few minutes. A few more minutes identifying examples, relationships to other concepts, and counter-examples / edge cases, and you've extracted 90% of the value of the text.
Almost every non-fiction book fits this model. It pays to tailor your reading approach to what you're reading.
As to value - in general, most business books are marginally valuable in isolation. Once you read many of them, however, very useful patterns begin to emerge. Recognizing and using those patterns provides the value.
On the other hand, the more you get used to reading math, the more possible it becomes for your eye to skim through math stuff.
I'm at the point where I can sometimes skim through arXiv papers and understand the gist.
(Does it work the same for books with code in them? Legit coders can skim and understand?)
The short answer: Syntax Error. -- I spend a lot of time working with different languages and frameworks. Though my day job is PHP, I've got an itch to make a mobile game.
Since they're not actually written in PHP, I've got to switch to a new language. ObjectiveC for iPhone, Android-Java, or any number of cross platform languages to pick up a third party framework.
On top of that - there's the issues of structure and stuff.
For learning a new language, there's no way to skim.
HOWEVER for something like an A* pathfinding algorythm (an artificial intelligence method of finding the most efficient path from A to Anywhere) - you can get the "Gist" by skimming a paper. I understand what A* is and how it does it ... but if I want to replicate it I still have to go over it line-by-line if I want to get it right though.
So, I think the short answer is "NO" coders can't skim stuff and get the job done right.