Ide or code editor confusion

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 4:36 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/04/2016 01:23 AM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Friday, July 22, 2016 at 2:38:10 AM UTC+12, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 12:22 AM,  sigmaphine1914 wrote:
>>>> Beginning Python: using Python 2.6 and Python 3.1. By James Payne
>>>>
>>>> Part II.
>>>
>>> Ugh, that's extremely old now.
>>
>> That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a waste of time buying books on computing topics. They start to reek of decay while they’re still on the shelf.
>
> Except for old Unix books!  I've got an old book on sed and awk that
> will likely be in date for years to come!  There's also an old book on
> vi, another on regular expression.  So some things are invaluable
> references.  Moving targets like Python, that's another story of course!

Anything that focuses on specifics will get out of date, but the
generalities don't. Here in the 2010s, I'm passing on to my students
design advice (eg relational database schemas, laying out program
code) that I learned from my father in the 1990s, and which he learned
in the 1970s, and which probably have been passed down since the
invention of programming, back in about 4004 BC. So there's often
*something* you can learn from an old book - but I still wouldn't
recommend a novice start out by picking up something that starts with
the proper way to install hard drive platters in an IBM System/360,
even if it does have a lot of sage wisdom in it :)

ChrisA