How do you read programming books?

Question

I was advised early in my career to never read a programming book (or tutorial) without typing up the code examples, and to always try to make the programs actually run. The idea being that this is the best way to truly internalize the material. I took the advice to heart.When I do have time to do this, get a lot out of it. But it also means I end up reading far fewer programming books these days as other responsibilities in life have caught up with meI am curious whether many other people here do the same. Do you type out every code example when reading programming books, or at least read them near a computer? Or do you just read them like any other piece of non-fiction and try to understand what the code is doing without running it?

bediger4000 · Accepted Answer

The last programming book I read was "The Go Programming Language". I did type quite a few of the exercises and do some experimenting by changing things in the examples.I often type example code meant to illustrate a concept or technique in a different language, PHP when the example is in Perk, say, or use SQLite instead of MySQL. Thank s opposed to examples meant to illustrate a particular language's syntax or features. C doesn't have channels, bash doesn't have pointers.