Learning by outdated books
22 Feb 2023
(not my actual bookshelf, but close enough, CC0)
Learning new things is hard, and finding the right way to do that is even more complicated. Since academia, I prefer books to get a systematic introduction to a subject. The first chapters of a book, as well as per-chapter and book conclusions, are the most valuable parts to skim through. It usually works well with more theoretical material. For example, I dug into books about distributed systems and storage architectures. Usually, they are peer-reviewed, thick and stand a couple of editions. The theoretical foundations for those systems rarely change.
There is a different story for more practical books. If you are going to read a book about a specific technology, you have a great chance to stumble upon an older book written a few years ago. The pace of technology is very high nowadays, and that book could be outdated soon after being published. I assume an attentive reader should follow the book and try doing the described topics by oneself, even if exercises and follow-ups are made-up. The first idea is to drop it and start learning from more up-to-date documentation. But wait! Learning from outdated books is a perfect chance to master technology. You would stop taking written as granted and begin to find out why the subsystems or approaches were deprecated or replaced with others. It helps to understand the rationale behind the outdated system design, its advantages and defects, and why the new system is superior to the former. You will dig into documentation more often rather than copy-pasting the code from the book.
And to be honest, everyone has a bookshelf with books that were bought a long time ago just to read them someday. So outdated books are helpful. Use them to your advantage.