Post History

## Are books special?

When I see a question like this, I naturally transform it into a more general question about *resources*. Printed books aren't necessarily the best way to learn about programming concepts; web pages may work much better. Some people like video tutorials; I personally have found they're usually not very good and that letting someone else set the pace doesn't work well. However, fundamentally I don't see a big enough difference between "recommending a book" and "recommending a Youtube video" to give them different policy treatment.

Beyond even that, I would classify resource requests the same way *even if they aren't educational*. Looking for a library to handle certain types of programming task, is currently deemed off topic on Stack Overflow - with all the same rationale as the questions about books etc. But in my view, a place that sees value in recommending one should see value in recommending the other.

## With appropriate focus, sure, why not

The scope of the Software community has already been established to be broader in some regards than Stack Overflow; in particular, we accept design and architecture questions that the Stack Exchange network would definitely see as a better fit for softwareengineering.SE, cs.SE, langdev.SE etc. I feel like if we're including those sorts of things, then "softwarerecs.SE for programmers" (i.e., recommendations for libraries, linters, IDEs etc.) fits naturally, and therefore so do the book requests.

**However**:

1. This cannot be permitted in the main Q&A space. Fundamentally we are talking here about *requests* for someone else's opinion, or to seek a *discussion* of pros and cons. This does not fit a Q&A format, which fundamentally is a way of presenting objective material (like a FAQ on a website, or a children's science book with horribly contrived questions about potato batteries). It should be in a separate category - possibly using the Wiki category type.

1. Posts need to have *very specific* requirements. If someone is looking for a library, it should be for a task (or a set of clearly related tasks) that is well enough defined that only a few libraries make any sense to recommend. Perhaps only one. A request for a book can't just be "a book to use to learn Python"; it should have some constraints on the target audience (People coming from other languages? Complete beginners? People targeting a specific type of development once they've learned the fundamentals?).

1. We should try to minimize follow-up discussion about individual resources. If someone tries to follow a video tutorial and runs into a specific problem, then that is either a specific problem *that forms the basis of a Q&A that is not really about the tutorial*, or else it is off topic entirely. The most we should say about the resource is (implicitly) that it is fit for the specific purpose for which it is being recommended, and any other specific information that people should have before considering it (e.g. availability and likely cost range for physical printed books; the license of a library; etc.). Ideally we don't get into anything more subjective than "worked for me" reactions (which for a book could mean "I have this book and I learned something valuable by reading it").

1. I do agree with trichoplax that we shouldn't entertain explicit requests to compare two resources for a particular purpose.