Please link to the original website (abstruse goose): http://abstrusegoose.com/249

I wouldn't mind those kinds of book titles so much if they just said "Learn basic [language] syntax in [n] [units of time]". Not as catchy I guess, though.

I think these books feed off the fact that most new programmers are doubly ignorant. They don't even know how much they don't know.

Speaking as someone who has had to maintain code written by someone who "learned" from these books, I completely agree. What was there was certainly C++ in a purely linguistic sense, but as code it was complete gibberish.

I am maintaining "code" written by person who was given this kind of book and told to build ERP. (This person don't have any previous knowledge on programming, mathematics or even computers)

10 years later it is worst than your nightmares.

I am quite fond of "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours" (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Write_Yourself_a_Scheme_in_48_H...). But I guess it is only the very brave who will use it to learn Haskell and Scheme.

Well, you can learn the syntax but the problem is when someone says they "know java" usually you care about them not just knowing java syntax, but the pitfalls, many frameworks that exist, general approach to problems, etc.

Just because I know Java + Ruby Syntax + Some stuff on RoR does not mean I am a good RoR programmer, there's just so much more to RoR than the syntax.

I want to see someone completely grok pointer logic in 24 hrs from knowing nothing.

Day 21.001: Fade out of existence because you forgot -- despite your years of physics training -- that killing your younger self is a time paradox.

Well, there would be several schools in terms of time travel (mutable/immutable timelines).

Someone forgot "Perfect doppleganger technology, then go back in time to kill Stroustrup, replace him, and write C++ in a way that you actually can learn it in 21 days. Also, obsolete Sun Microsystems."

I think everyone is taking the title a little too literally. The "24 hours" gimmick is just a way of constraining the information into discrete concepts. Once you know 24 facets of a language, you are certainly qualified to start testing out the language. Is there anyone who really thinks that by reading any number of books on a topic you could consider yourself an expert?

" Is there anyone who really thinks that by reading any number of books on a topic you could consider yourself an expert?"

Depends on what exactly "reading" encompasses. If you can work through a good book (say SICP) doing all the exercises etc and writing a lot of code, I'd be very surprised if you don't "level up" very fast. If you've worked completely through "C Interfaces and Implementations" by David Hanson, you should be a pretty good C programmer at the end.

Working through a series of great books will amplify this effect.

so yes you can achieve a lot through proper use of books but 21 days, no way.

> Is there anyone who really thinks that by reading any number of books on a topic you could consider yourself an expert?

Math may be the one of the few areas, where this is true. If you can read (and understand!) a math book, you have already gone pretty far. But that's much closer to reading source code (or poetry) than your average book.

Sadly, yes.

It's doubly funny when you look at the difference between "use knowledge to make an age-reversing potion" which follows with "use knowledge to build flux capacitor"