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Old books are of two general types:
1. Programming-language specific
2. Language-agnostic like Algorithms, Maths, OS theory, etc.
Type 2 books are less likely to have expiry dates, IMHO.
(Of course, fiction, history, etc. books are of a different realm altogether).
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The Dragon book.
Since the newest one costs something like $150 I figure I will hang on to the older version if I want to look something up.
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Over the last several years I have thinned my herd of technical books quite a bit. Here at work I have about 18 inches of shelf. At home it's about half a dozen volumes, a couple of college textbooks from 40 years ago plus some 'work' technical stuff.
I recently dumped a couple boxes of technical books I had stored at home. MS-DOS references, internals, and undocumented stuff. I used a lot of this back in the 90's at work.
Software Zen: delete this;
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They are great for target practice.
My in-laws would shoot various guns on Thanksgiving day -- mostly we shot clay pigeons (20 gauge and 12 gauge) but they would also haul out other guns - .44 handgun, other various rifles etc.
But often they would say, "well, let's just shoot at that twig down there about 30 yards"
It was terribly un-fun that way.
I started taking my old tech books and place 4 or 5 in front of each other.
That was a blast (literally) as you could track the bullet through the pages of the book. So cool!
Great Science
I remember they were shooting a hollow point out of the .44 pistol and the bullet hole was perfectly round on entry and halfway through an 800 page tech book but then somehwere around page 400 or so the bullet mis-formed and ripped a huge hole through the rest of the book.
So, use your old tech books for target practice.
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Side note, bales of hay don't work so well for practice with a bow and arrow. The bale will start falling apart... 
Jeremy Falcon
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Somehow this conjured up a mental image of some dumb action movie where the good guy dives behind a bale of hay for protection...
Something Weird Al would do anyway. 
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It's a shame I threw out all of the mechanical engineering textbooks from college. Even though I was a computer engineering major, I still had to take statics, dynamics, strength of materials, thermodynamics, and electromagnetics. They made up about 15% of the credit hours for my degree and have been utterly useless.
Those books would have made profoundly satisfying targets.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I bought very few books. The "treasured" ones are from a very long time ago; 6502 programming, manuals for UK101 etc. A bigger problem for me, now acting as several inches of loft insulation, are user manuals and course materials that I wrote, for various software vendors. Can't chuck them as probably the only copies still in existence! π
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Hello Derek how are you ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I'm fine thanks. Haven't visited CP for a while, need to catch up... Change of routine. Good to see the CCC is back - an incentive to get going by 9am!
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BryanFazekas wrote: Is there any value in books this old? WordPress is probably 12 yo and it's the youngest. ASP and XML are circa 2000, and C is circa 1990.
Yes, for historical purposes. But, not in physical format. You never know when you'll need it. Yes it's outdated tech, but for studying history it's nice to get context. Unless you know for certain you'll never, ever use that tech again.
If there are eBook versions, get those and recycle the paper version if you don't want to lug it around. It'll be searchable too. If there aren't any eBook versions, consider making an eBook out of them. There are machines that'll take care of the grunt work for you. You can use a book scanning service.
Sometimes, just sometimes, you want info that's out of print. Like when MSDN dumped all their Win32 info after .NET came out.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Like when MSDN dumped all their Win32 info after .NET came out.
MS published all of that in some "MSDN Library Archive" set, that came in two big blue CD binders. I made a point of keeping that one. This is not quite it, but very similar.
(actually I just found my copy of the disc that had the cover at the link above).
I remember also making a point of keeping the very first MSDN disc set. Grand total of 14 CDs, if I'm not mistaken. Then it quickly ballooned to hundreds of discs.
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I donate all my old books to my local city library branch. They even have a drive-by deposit box. What they do with them is part of their job. I have actual seen some of my old books on their shelves inside the public part of the main library.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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You could donate them to your local community theatre (if you have one) as props.
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I had forgotten about Smalltalk, heard of it many years ago but, like others, didn't do anything with it.
Downloaded Squeak, already have a germ of an app that I might try.
A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
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I knew some developers who used SmallTalk about twenty years ago.
Never saw it myself.
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Yuk, a horrible mess of a language. Makes APL read like a Ladybird* book.
*Ladybird publish(ed) guides for children on many subjects.
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Quote: Yuk, a horrible mess of a language. Makes APL read like a Ladybird* book.
Used APL for some simulation stuff (way) back in the day.
You can always tell an APL programmer... but not much.
Lou
>64
Itβs weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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"Things came to a head when someone swapped 12 of the APL keyboard keys around."
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Still watching the video, but 100% agree with the concepts. I've been a long time advocate of saying you can achieve some OOP (as we've some to understand it) in C.
Some n00bs will say no you can't, but you can... just not with "classes" but with the principles of OOP. Of course not everything that C++ does and it's more theory/abstractions/conventions than something tangible. But, you can still get some of those principles across... if you understand the principles and don't just memorize syntax.
I'd elaborate on it, but I don't wanna. Don't have the juice for another "argument" online. Privately I would though.
Jeremy Falcon
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Since OOP largely predates my college education (1979-1984, Wright State University, go Raiders) I learned it on the fly at work. My perspective is that it is useful for organization and as a mindset when constructing software. You can use OOP principles in assembly language or a Windows batch file if that serves the problem at hand.
I've always viewed academic purists(*) with skepticism, and Alan Kay's opinion triggers me. He has a chocolate hammer, and seems to think it is the only thing for nails even when they're pesto-flavored.
(*) Don't even mention Grady Booch.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Since OOP largely predates my college education (1979-1984, Wright State University, go Raiders) I learned it on the fly at work.
I was less than a year old when you went to college then. Don't hold it against me though.
Gary Wheeler wrote: You can use OOP principles in assembly language or a Windows batch file if that serves the problem at hand.
Amen, brother.
Gary Wheeler wrote: I've always viewed academic purists(*) with skepticism, and Alan Kay's opinion triggers me. He has a chocolate hammer, and seems to think it is the only thing for nails even when they're pesto-flavored.
True dat, man. Acedamia is great and needed, but you don't really learn something until you apply it and use it. Even Einstein said at some point you gotta get your face out of the books and start doing. Never stop reading, but do something already... otherwise you're just repeating crap you don't really know.
Personally, I think OOP (even the version we know that's not the same) is cool. I like the way Java/C# organizes things, for instance. Nothing against the theories. But, you can also accomplish the same concepts with functional programming, etc. Then you get peeps that don't even understand what they're doing acting all superior. Welcome to life I guess...
Gary Wheeler wrote: (*) Don't even mention Grady Booch.
I'll have to Google him, but I dare not mention it.
Jeremy Falcon
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(another minimalist clue)
Pinch fitting. (11)
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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