Stop reading tech books like fiction
TL;DR: Stop reading tech books like novels. Read with intent. Read to solve problems. Otherwise, you’re just procrastinating with a smart-looking excuse.
There’s a lot of BS advice on the internet, but the one BS advice I want to rant on today is
Read more tech books to become a better software engineer.
It’s not entirely false, but the way people interpret it is the problem.
This all comes down to something super obvious, something everyone knows but still ignores because it’s uncomfortable, and hard :
Reading without applying knowledge is mostly useless.
I fell into this trap multiple times. A book gets hyped (e.g "Refactoring" is a must read for all engineers, made me 10x). You buy it, read a few chapters, maybe even highlight some lines… then it quietly dies on your shelf.
Why didn’t you finish the book?
It’s a dumb question to ask, because - It’s not fiction!
There’s no meaning to finishing a tech book. At best, they’re a collection of insights - many of which don’t build on each other. You’re supposed to pick and choose what matters right now, not finish it cover to cover.
I fell hard for this trap. You crack open the book, skim the first few chapters—it’s stuff you sort of already know. But you tell yourself, “Real engineers finish books.”
So you grind through the slow parts, eyes half-glazed, waiting for the good stuff. Eventually, you hit the meaty chapters, and yeah, the insights are great.
You read them one-by-one thinking “wow the liskov substitution principle, cool idea”, “omg, singletons!”, “pff SOLID blew my mind”.
You close the book, the remote is in your hand, you turn on another episode of “The Office”.
You wake up the next day, telling your co-workers “I started reading Clean Code”, and they think you are a douche because they now feel guilty they didn’t do something “productive” as you did.
You get back to your task, changing a color of a button and call it a day.
ON REPEAT.
I’m not saying this to shame or guilt trip you, I’m saying it to set you free.
DON’T READ TECH BOOKS (AND DON’T LET ANYONE GUILT TRIP YOU ABOUT IT).
If you are not going to apply the knowledge right away, it is mostly useless. unless you are trying to impress someone in a shallow way (“I read Clean Code, let’s do a refactor our code is not clean.”).
“But reading and not applying it must be better than not reading at all”, right?
Nope, it might be even worse. Passive reading gives you the illusion of progress, you feel productive turning pages, highlighting quotes, maybe even bragging that you’re reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications, but none of it sticks.
You tell yourself you’re “learning,” so you don’t actually do anything. You don’t build. You don’t ship. You just read.
The right way to read books
Let me introduce you to how I read now: PDR – Problem-Driven Reading.
It’s the opposite of MDR – Marketing-Driven Reading.
MDR (Marketing-Driven-Reading): Tech influencers tell you it’s the best book ever, you should read it to become 10x or whatever.
Achievement Unlocked: you can join the hype train and guilt trip your coworkers even though you don’t recall a single detail from the single chapter you read.
PDR (Problem-Driven-Reading): you have a problem you are trying to solve, you search the internet for a solution - they mention “oh you should use the SOLID principles for that”, and then you go read the Clean Code, specifically the parts about the SOLID principles - not cover to cover.
By the time you finish these chapters, you can immediately apply it to the problem at hand.
Achievement Unlocked: you actually learned something.
Does it mean we shouldn’t read just to explore?
Exploring is fine, read whatever sparks your curiosity. But don’t confuse exploration with progress.
If you’re reading aimlessly, without a goal or problem to solve, be honest with yourself: are you actually learning, or just procrastinating with a smarter-looking excuse?