Who honestly uses books anymore?

I know, coming from someone who programs websites for a living this seems like a rather strange statement but alas, it’s a true one.

Who seriously uses a book anymore? In college they throw $200+ textbooks at you knowing that you’ll never actually use them when you leave school so what’s the point? This is for those in the web design and web programming fields, I’m not talking in regards to anything non-computer related.

I have about 10 programming books sitting right above me :: points up :: and I can honestly say that the seam on more than half of them have never been cracked. They were given to me as gifts, for the most part, but I’ve found that based on the books I have thumbed through I’m further advanced. I check the date on the book to find out that it’s an HTML programming book from 2001. I’m sure many people have noticed that HTML has come a very long way since 2001!

PHP Programmers, for the most part, go straight to PHP.net, I know this because I have. I also know that Sean is on that site on a regular basis.

So seriously people – what’s the point in spending money to buy a book when it can all be found online? Further more, with the rise of eBooks, where it’s much easier to find things on a PDF file, why go with the old way of doing things and not step a little further in the future?

[tags]Books, HTML, eBooks, PHP[/tags]