“I think you need to read more,” my professor told me bluntly. I’d just shared my idea for an upcoming paper, and he clearly wasn’t thrilled about it.

“Read more?” I remember thinking. I wasn’t expecting that response. I walked out of his university office trying to make sense of his comment.

So I read a lot over the next few weeks. My knowledge grew tremendously — and so did my ideas, which inspired a new and improved paper topic.

That experience, which was about a decade ago, taught me a critical lesson: the benefits of reading avidly and broadly about your field. What began as a one-time thing to do well in a class has turned into a lifetime habit.

Interestingly, I received similar advice when I began writing professionally. I was constantly told to write a lot and read a lot.

Given the emphasis on reading up to that point, you can imagine my shock at the attitude toward reading when I began to program. It seems to be a low priority for many people.

In the world of programming, reading includes reading code and reading technical books. I’ve written previously on why reading code matters and how to go about it.

Now it’s time to tackle reading technical programming books.

Why Books?

Reading technical programming books is one habit programmers should begin immediately. It’s a relatively small investment that’ll help you now, but will pay dividends in the future for this simple reason: your knowledge will compound over time.

The question you’re probably asking is this: why books?

After all, we spend a bulk of our days glued to the computer, where we have access to a seemingly infinite amount of material (and so much of it is free).

As a producer of online content, I realize that online articles and blog posts have their place. Blog posts can give you an interesting perspective and exposure to a new idea. A technical article or the documentation for a language or technology can answer that specific question you have.

But books have their place, too.

They fill a different need: they’re a source of long-form content that take you on an in-depth journey about a particular topic. A blog post or technical article may be a few hundred or thousand words. A book is tens of thousands.

When you pick up a technical book, you take a deep dive into said topic. You pick up the nuances. You study, practice, and learn. You get into the mindset of an industry expert. You begin to see things differently, as your context begins to grow.

There’s no shortage of topics to read about in our field:

• Computer architecture
• Agile software development
• Algorithms
• Testing
• Writing clean code
• Refactoring

The list goes on and on.

Even in the age of everything digital, it pays to begin your own library of technical material. So invest in some technical books. Use them. Write in them. Reference them as you code to help you build good habits.

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