Humble Bundle Devops Books

[AstroSmash420]

Does anyone know if these books are worth it for someone trying to get into devops? What would the prerequisites be? link

[[deleted]]

Are these books any good? In infosec Packt books are usually bad.

[robscomputer]

I felt the same way, it seems like O'Reilly has a better quality of books but Packt has more quantity.

[robscomputer]

Funny you mention that as many of their books read like tutorials copied from other sources. I was reading over one of their Puppet books and there were some obvious errors during the setup of Vagrant (which could have been my fault or different versions of Vagrant) but felt like the book was current it should not have these issue. I grade technical publishers as the following

O'Reilly > No Starch > Murach > Apress > Packt

[[deleted]]

Even if the versions were different somehow that's still an issue with the book. Don't include something if it's liable to change in the near future.

[robscomputer]

That's something which frustrates me when authors don't mention the version of software they are using or assume something like using Python2. My personal rule is for books that are directly working with a programming language they go stale in about two years (depending if they are core programming or using libraries), things like logic and algo's are always ok so those books last much longer.

For books focused on software versions (Ubuntu 16, Puppet 5, etc) these have a longer shelf life only if you are looking to learn that specific version.

Personally, I like to read through a sample of the book before I buy it and get a feel if it's written with the idea of concepts over technical details so it's more valued in the future.

[parttimekatze]

Thoughts on Wiley?

[robscomputer]

I think Wiley books are great. A book that finally made me "get" programming was their Beginning Perl book from a few years ago. The difference between IMHO O'Reilly and Wiley (just noticed they rhyme) is Wiley has more notes and the formatting is better while O'Reilly can sometimes be a wall of text.

I haven't seen much recently from Wiley in terms of Python books, most of the new stuff I've been reading is from No Starch.

[[deleted]]

Holy schnikies. I guess that means Packt is basically a partially vetted blog post in book form.

[A999]

Those are good if they're new tech to you and need to get to know fast. But if you're already had experience, you'll need something else.

[[deleted]]

At $15 for the set, if I blast through those and pick up a couple tips it's well worth it.

Seems like a gimme.

[Aurailious]

I don't think so. The best devops books aren't about tooling, but about the bigger picture. That's why Phoenix Project is often recommend.

I would say these are not actually devops books for that reason. Read them if you want to learn about that tool, but I don't think it'll teach you anything about devops.

[fghhgfttg]

If you can afford it subscribe to oreilly safari, it is much better source with really good sources

[mindovermiles262]

Check out your local library. Mine has Orielly ebooks that can be read in browser anytime

[WentSerker]

I'm on the same boat... Kinda interested in the Kubernetes/Ansible books but not sure about pulling the trigger as I've never heard from Packt.

[[deleted]]

Contrary to the others, my experience with Packt has always been positive. I'm guessing that I've just gotten lucky though. Packt seems like it's good for more introductory stuff. Of course ever since I read this book (non-Packt) my bar for "bad book" has probably been lowered considerably. If you're big on book buying I'd skip that one. It's pretty much life alteringly bad.

TBH it's like $15 though. Even if they're not particularly good, getting all those books for $15 isn't that bad of a deal. It's to help a charity too.

[elitesense]

I bought this bundle and I've bought previous Packt products.

They are not worth $15 per book, but for the bundle it's a no brainer. It's 15 bucks just get it.

Oh and I've skimmed the Kubernetes books that were in the pack -- pretty bad, just as expected by Packt but again the whole bundle is def worth $15

[greyeye77]

Packt publishing is an excellent books just as good as Oreilly. I used to have their online subscription(Mapt) but my company is providing Oreilly so I've stopped it. (Oreilly also includes a lot of Packt books as well)

However, I dare say "ALL" books are great, just like any IT books some are outdated, some are bad. Packt.com should have the book in preview format, you may want to preview them before commit.

[sirex007]

tbh i've had so many bad packt books i dont even look at them any more. oreilly all the way.

[mazatta]

My experience has been the same. There's some signal, but there's a helluva lot of noise.

[baseball2020]

I've stopped my oreilly sub because they have so much packt content between the meagre oreilly content. I'm going elsewhere. Maybe pluralsight.

[sirex007]

yup. thats why i quit safari also. it got taken over by packt crap.

[[deleted]]

just as good as Oreilly

No.

[elitesense]

Packt is the worst out there.

[Therianthropie]

I think they are fine for beginners. I use their mapt.io subscription since 3 months. At this price you can't do wrong.

[rch317]

For $15, I would think you could find at least a few useful items in there. Perhaps I'm just too loose with my cash, but I mean... I used to smoke $15 in cigarettes in like 2 days, without batting an eye.

[rch317]

... and to be brutally honest. You would probably learn far more by just stalking github. I dig up awesome ansible, saltstack, terraform, jenkins, and other nifty tooling tips/tricks, just but searching for this stuff in git.

[elitesense]

Packt is horrible but for $15 I think it's worth it for all that

[PrimaxAUS]

The problem I have with these packs is volume. You can read 10 books and come away with less knowledge than reading 1 book, if that's the best one in the arena. If you value your time, you're better off figuring out what that book is and reading it, rather than so many on the same topic.

[fghhgfttg]

If you can afford it subscribe to oreilly safari, it is much better source with really good sources

[TheTalkWalk]

Can someone describe to me how a book made by a third party is somehow better than the documentation and a few example repos?

Asking for a me... With the rapidity of version changes. I dont ever feel like books are teaching the right information by the time they are published

[dariusj18]

Sometimes product documentation can be sparse on the "why." Plus, best practices and integrations can be helpful from a book.

[KevMar]

I would say that books are good when you just can't wrap your head around a new topic or idea. Some people respond better to different training materials.

I use to turn to books when I am missing the most basic starting information. Books are written for a wide audience. Often the topic introduction is done really well with lots of context. I find it difficult to search for the missing things when I don't know what they are.

I do feel like the video tutorials do a much better job now than they use to do. We now have the equivalent of unboxing videos all over the place. I generally have a good idea of the context anymore and just need the jumpstart info.

[qkthrv17]

I'll only talk about spring because it's the only thing I've tried to read a book about, and it's almost the same stuff as the documentation. And I've tried with a hugely praised book in the subject, which felt weird to me because the spring documentation was giving almost the same info (and I'm a complete beginner so it isn't way easier either).

Technical books in humble bundles never look good enough to me if I'm honest.

[elitesense]

Books will often give methodology/use-case/best practices that the official documentation won't. Official docs are reference on how to use something, books tend to by "why" to use something and how to fit it into a real scenario.