Can you learn programming strictly from books?

[Demosthenes]

This is a question I've had for a while, and I want to know what your opinions on it are. Oviously, if you can get some practical experience, it's better, but do you think that you can become a good programmer strictly through book knowledge?

[tokill.ace]

You can, but very confusing to me. You'll get stuck on one sentance for atleast 30 min.

[Demosthenes]

Well, I don't mean syntactically. Syntax obviously will take a little time, and reference to books to get used to for every language you learn. What I meant to ask was can you be an efficient programmer with just book-knowledge?

[tokill.ace]

It really depends what book you buy. If your a newbie at it and buy Dummies, it will help you understand it a little better. After you do the Dummy, go for the hard ones and you will learn.

[Demosthenes]

Obviously, but can you become an effecient programmer strictly through books. I'm not doubting that you can learn through them, I'm asking can you become good at it.

[Tyrannicide]

Honestly, you could become a good programmer, but without actually coding stuff, your bound to make mistakes a lot. You need to use the code along the way to get used to the style and such.

But than again, it can come down to who you are, some people need 'hands on experience'(in this case, actually coding on the pc as they learn) and some people can just read and understand the new information without ever messing around with it. So I believe you can program effeciently without testing and fooling around with the program code on a pc. Just the experience working with the code could help you understand the language quicker and better since your using it.

[WetWired]

Yes. I learned BASIC, QBASIC, TPascal and TASM purely from books and developed a very efficient coding style from it. I was at the head of my class by the time I actually took a programming class. When I took Computer Science in high school, all I gained was yet another language.

[Chruser]

Programming is just understanding. If you practice, you gain understanding. If you read books, you gain understanding as well. I'm guessing a little bit of everything is good, but I don't think any of those "rules" are set in stone.

[Hades-Knight]

I got VB 6 for dummies and VB6 from the ground up...only read about half the dummies one and havent started the other one, i suposedly learned c+ at school but if you told me to write a program right now I couldnt....i forgot everything