What is the nerdiest thing you own? | The Coffeehouse

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

It seems to be some kind of epeen thing if you have a bunch of books on your bookshelf in your office. Almost always they in a pristine (unused) condition. Mathematics and computer science professors are the biggest culprits, but that's probably because book publishers mail them textbooks like AOL CDs.

SlackmasterK
I write my OWN blogging engines

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Oct 6th @ 5:59 PM

Naw, one shouldn't base their research on one place. I always start from my favorite search engine.

Sure, I usually end up on MSDN for technical data... But for Q&A and problem solving I end up on the site we don't seem to discuss here, but which has made me lean away from Techoff...

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Bass

#Oct 7th @ 8:15 PM

Doctors, Lawyers, and other "trusted" pro's do the same thing.

I only have one book at work and I stole that... I also haven't read it (implementing enterprise infrastructure patterns). I rarely buy tech books these days since much of the information can be found on the interweb and much of it is out-of-date almost from the day you buy it (like buying a new car).

I have had a Safari Books (not to be confused with the web-browser) subscription before however.

LeoDavidson

In reply to SlackmasterK

#Oct 7th @ 9:55 PM

I just mean trying to get API documentation out of MSDN Library. It's completely broken for Win32 and keeps getting worse with every Visual Studio and/or Platform SDK update. Many APIs aren't even in the Index at all now. Pushing F1 over a function name has about a 1 in 10 chance of working and taking you to the page for the Win32 API. I believe the technical term for it is "a load of old gash."

If I want to find out about stuff in general then searching the web is best -- wide range of sources as you say -- but if I just want to read the API contract for something then I want what I had in VC6 where I could highlight an API and push F1 (and not be taken to some page about .Net). Or I could type an API name into the Index tab and it'd actually find it, but not anymore in many cases.

(And MSDN Library used to let me filter out the stuff I didn't use which is no longer possible, but that's the least of my complaints now!)

spivonious

In reply to SlackmasterK

#Oct 6th @ 4:14 PM

I actually prefer books for learning something new (as long as they're not written like reference manuals). If I'm troubleshooting or need to know the members of some API, then MSDN/Google is my friend.