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Yeah, a kind of odd limbo state, not really knowing anything.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: kind of odd limbo state,
Doctor: The patient isn't breathing.
Nurse: Yeah, a bit of a limbo state, it seems.
Doctor: Limbo-state? Uh, we in the business call that dead. 
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First Dilbert, Now ![Green Alien | [Alien]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/alien.gif)
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Maybe go back to the pub for a spell.
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After today I am thinking of moving in!
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despartion ?
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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pkfox wrote: despartion ?
It's that feeling of desperation you get when you realize you've just deleted the wrong partition and you know you have no backup.
(sorry, it's the best I could do on short notice...)
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dandy72 wrote: desperation you get when you realize you've just deleted the wrong partition
Part of my role as the DSJB(*) is to create the Windows system images we install on our industrial PC's. Been there, done that, currently wearing the blood, sweat, and tears-stained T-shirt.
(*) Departmental Sh*t-Job Boy
Software Zen: delete this;
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After eliminating valueless textbooks after graduating college, I made it a point to NOT buy technical books.
Other folks may go to an extreme -- one guy I worked with had a bookcase 8' tall and 12' wide, literally overflowing with technical books. Each time he touched a new technology, he purchased at least 3 new books. When he moved offices, it took him 2 days to move all the books.
Having spent 25+ years as a consultant/contractor, when I needed technical books, I talked the client into buying them. The same conversation was conducted repeatedly with each client: "You know you can't keep the books when your contract ends?"
Yeah, that was actually the idea. I had no idea what the future would bring in terms of technology I would work with, so I'd talk the next client into buying what I need for that contract. Saved me money AND I didn't have to move the books. When I went into a client site for the first time, I carried my briefcase and one bag of "stuff", and when I left, I did the same.
That said, this morning I looked at the bookcase in my home office and wondered what I'd do with the few books I purchased that are LONG outdated. Keeping with my "don't buy" mantra, there's only 5:
Microsoft C Programming for the PC
XML for Dummies
Learn ASP.NET in 21 Days (probably v1)
Professional C# 2008
Professional WordPress (probably v2)
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.
I hate to toss them in the landfill but can't figure out a use for them.
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Bequeath them in your will, let your ancestors deal with what to do with them.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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MarkTJohnson wrote: Bequeath them in your will, let your ancestors descendants deal with what to do with them.
FTFY.
I think your ancestors have even less use for your old books than you do. 
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I always get that wrong. Thank you. Thinking like Merlin, aging backwards.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Ok, Benjamin Button. 
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I have zero nostalgia with paper books, especially technical books. (with some exceptions)
I moved houses too many times with too many cases of books.
I've recycled most of them and gave a few.
I still have a small bookshelf with 2 dozen dusty books.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Maximilien wrote: I moved houses too many times with too many cases of books.
Yep, moving is what did me in too.
I had some books when I started out, then gradually each time I moved I was like, "Why am I carrying these bricks made of paper all over the world?"
I sold all of them (except a few nostalgia pieces) to Half Price Books and stopped breaking my back. Now I haven't moved for over 6 years & don't intend too.
But I'm much tidier. 
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Looking around at the shelf behind me I see a dozen or two such books. I may still have some boxed up after my latest move (five years ago). Some date back to the 80s.
I don't think I've bought a new technical book since around 2010, but I have bought/acquired used ones. For instance, I have a COBOL book someone was giving away a few years back.
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I used to use my C++ Manuals as a doorstop
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Compared to my bookshelf, those are practically brand new. I still have books on (MS-)DOS internals and an old 8086/8088 programmers guide that details the entire instruction set.
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Last year I threw away books from that era covering similar topics. One I remember buying and then reading, and it went way over my head (I was in my early teens and had a hard time already understanding books written in English, let alone the subject matter). I went back to it years later, and (re-)discovered interrupt programming. Then it turned out for years to be one of my favorite books.
I also had about half a dozen OS/2 books - one with a foreword from Bill Gates.
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I remember running OS/2 2.x quite some time before Win95 released.
It was quite amazing to see true pre-emptive multitasking when all we really had was cooperative multitasking in the Windows 3 world.
Then Win95 released and OS/2 continued the issues of no driver development (your CD-ROM didn't work in OS/2 bec their weren't any drivers for it) and win95 killed OS/2 and OS/2 killed itself. 
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BryanFazekas wrote: I'd talk the next client into buying what I need for that contract.
I know a guy who does house renovations for a living. If there's an unusual tool he doesn't already have but needs for a job, he buys it and keeps it (or rents it for the duration needed if he knows he's never gonna use it ever again, or so rarely he can't justify the purchase). He doesn't make the customer buy it and then hand it over when the job's done. The customer has no need for the tool.
Things might be different in the software world; if you need a license to use some software, and the customer needs to run that software, this makes sense...but books? Even though you hand it to the customer after the job's done, you don't wipe out from your mind what you've learned from the book. You're the main beneficiary. And the customer (in all likelihood) also has no need for the book.
But, I've never done any contracting...maybe I'd change my mind if I was, or was working on stuff I have zero interest in after the job was done. Otherwise, I'd buy, and keep.
In any case...I did get rid (last year or so) of a big pile of books, maybe 5 feet high if I had stacked them all. Clearly some stuff I'll never use again. Although the hoarder archivist in me kinda regrets throwing away at least some of them. Some were brand new (clearly I got by without reading them...) I just never had a "proper" bookshelf and the books were just taking up place in a number of boxes on the floor of a closet. Otherwise I probably would've hung onto a few of them (some I was happy to be rid of).
What annoyed me the most is that I had checked with my local library to see if they'd take them, rather than sending them for recycling (which I know in some cases still end up in a landfill anyway). They wouldn't take anything older than 5 years. Yet these are the same people who are constantly complaining they're underfunded. They weren't junk, and I'm sure if I had bothered I might have found some buyers, even if only for historical value.
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dandy72 wrote: They wouldn't take anything older than 5 years. Yet these are the same people who are constantly complaining they're underfunded. They weren't junk, and I'm sure if I had bothered I might have found some buyers, even if only for historical value.
Err...except you just stated that some of them you had never read and that you would never use them again.
Libraries of course must either store books or dispose of them. Which costs money. You know the part where funding comes in.
And computing has impacted them as well. So they can easily track titles and genres which people do read and those that they don't. So they maximize the potential.
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jschell wrote: except you just stated that some of them you had never read and that you would never use them again.
Which doesn't make them valueless.
In that particular case I just wasn't the target audience. I just wanted to salvage this brand new set of 6 or 7 volumes, headed for the dumpster, still shrink-wrapped together. Very technical, very expensive, but I just never went in that direction.
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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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