I started learning software in the early 2010s and I read a lot of software books like the ones mentioned in the article. I continued reading them as the years went on, but the last one I bought was probably 4 or 5 years ago. Naturally, I probably don't need books as much as I used to -- I can generally pick up something new and know where to find what I need to find, "learning to learn" and all that. I also think they are better for foundational knowledge; many times the books become outdated very quickly. So if I was gonna attempt to write a database or learn distributed programming theory, I'd probably pick up a book, but if I wanted to learn a specific tool (or most languages) I'd probably stick to the web.