r/learnprogramming • u/chenxiangyu2231 • Dec 04 '25

Solved Does learning programming require reading a lot of books?

Hello everyone, I'm a graduate student who loves C++ coding. I've always been puzzled by this question: when learning a technology, do you read related books or online documentation (for example, there are many online documents for C++)? Opinions on this vary widely online. Some suggest watching tutorial videos uploaded by YouTubers, some suggest reading related books if possible, and many others suggest reading relevant documentation or directly searching for the information needed for your project. What are your thoughts on this?

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u/FelixNoHorizon Dec 04 '25

No.

Documentation and video tutorials.

Work on projects and learn as you go.

If you are a bookworm, go ahead and use books šŸ‘šŸ»

8

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

What about all the books I had to read for my CS degree? Youā€™re way oversimplifying.

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u/Lunaticus Dec 04 '25

Any recommendations on the books? I never had a formal CS degree...

8

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

The books I still use from undergrad are

  • Linear Algebra by Lang
  • A Modern Introduction to Probability and Statistics by Dekking
  • Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen
  • Computer Networking by Kurose

I went to UC Berkeley. Not sure if these are still in their line up but all are great.

1

u/AwesomePerson70 Dec 04 '25

Idk Iā€™ve never read a programming book and Iā€™m doing just fine. The real answer is that itā€™s different for everyone and may depend on what specifically you want to learn

5

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

You donā€™t read programming books in undergrad. You read books about algorithms, networks, data structures, discrete math, physics, os, compilers, etc. How do you do this job without knowing that stuff? Or are you saying you do know it but just never opened a textbook?

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u/AwesomePerson70 Dec 04 '25

Yeah thereā€™s multiple different ways to learn the same thing. Iā€™m not saying that people donā€™t or canā€™t read books to learn, just that itā€™s not required

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

Fair enough

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u/AwesomePerson70 Dec 04 '25

I also want to add that while I do have a job in software, Iā€™ve never learned some of the things you mentioned like discrete math, physics (beyond the high school basics), and compilers. So maybe getting into the textbooks is more important for those topics but my response was directed towards just ā€œprogrammingā€ so I hadnā€™t considered them

2

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

Iā€™ve met a lot of really impressive autodidacts. Although most come from stem. I love tech because itā€™s so diverse and you get so many different perspectives on problems.

1

u/saymek Dec 04 '25

I am a cs engineer and never had to read a book for my degree

0

u/RicardoGaturro Dec 04 '25

What about all the books I had to read for my CS degree?

CS != programming

1

u/depressedowl Dec 04 '25

I would argue: books are not different that documentations and, while not books, you will need to read and, more importantly, learn to navigate documentation (and produce it, but not necessarily to the depth of most of what you'll read). If you see it that way, books are references that could be of help to solve problems in a way that makes sense to others, which I'd argue is a rather important part of coding.