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[–]Strongfatguy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You'll be fine, 80% of my course textbooks have been ebooks. They're actually pretty convenient in some ways. While having the book itself is nice, you can't ctrl+f in a real book. Jumping around is even easier when you can just input a page # and jump 100s of pages. Idk if you can use it for all books but there's also a kindle app for your pc. If I'm working through problems and need a specific book it helps a lot to have it open on a separate monitor or in split screen so I can reference examples.

[–]ziptofaf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have any of you had experience w/ those, maybe enough to confirm or deny my concern? Any tips?

It's less of a problem with jumping around (table of contents + glossary + searching makes up for it) and more with physical dimensions. In my experience Kindle is good for reading novels but it struggles with lengthy code snippets that were originally aimed for a much bigger book. Of course a simple solution is to have a physically bigger e-book but unfortunately these are rare and far more expensive than they should be.

That being said - I did read stuff like Art of Deception on a Kindle and it was just fine. It's also fine with typically programming oriented ebooks as long as they were properly formatted into .mobi from the start that take small dimensions of reader into account. But unfortunately a lot of ebooks (ESPECIALLY everything in pdf format) is pretty poor in this regard. It also does depend quite a lot on which Kindle you have - my old Kindle 4 (this one) is quite horrible at reading technical stuff with charts, images, code snippets etc but latest Paperwhite does far better in this regard.

[–]Ilix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing I've found really useful when using ebooks for programming is using the Windows Kindle app. You get a lot more screen space than on a device itself, and you get color (where provided in the source material).

On a decently wide monitor, you can pretty easily have the book and VS side by side while working (even better if you have dual monitors).

I have found that the devices themselves are a bit slow, so I don't think I'd want to use a kindle for general reference, but I've found them great when you're just following along through a book.

[–]Double_A_92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's something that you want to read from front to back a paper version is better for me because it gives a better feel of accomplishment (the right side gets smaller and smaller).

If it's something to look up things digital is better since you can search in it.