Reading Beyond Code

Not all learning has to look like a class

Technical books are necessary. When I need to understand an API, fix a query, or learn how a tool works, I want precise documentation, examples I can run, and explanations that do not hide the difficult cases. A novel cannot replace any of that. Neither can an essay replace testing, practice, or the work of building software.

But it would be a poor view of programming to reduce everything a programmer needs to think about to what fits inside a manual.

A technical book usually teaches me a tool or a model. Fiction asks me to live for a while with incomplete information. A character does not come with official documentation. Their motives may contradict each other, and a decision that seemed absurd in chapter three may take on a different meaning much later. I have to pay attention, remember, and accept that I do not have every answer yet.

That is nothing like following a tutorial, but it is not useless. In software, we also make decisions with incomplete requirements, people who understand the same words differently, and systems that carry histories no one wrote down. I am not saying short stories will solve a difficult architecture problem. I am saying there is value in practicing patience with something that does not make sense yet.

Essays offer something else. They let me watch someone arrange an idea, present evidence, acknowledge an objection, and decide how far the argument can go. I can disagree with the conclusion and still learn from how the case was built. That distinction matters to me. Reading is not about collecting other people's conclusions. It is also about examining how they reached them.

The discomfort of changing my mind

One book I recommend is Think Again by Adam Grant. I value its focus on reconsidering ideas, questioning opinions, unlearning, and holding on to humility and curiosity. It does not treat intelligence as automatic protection against error. In fact, an intelligent person can become very skilled at defending a bad idea.

That feels especially familiar in programming. Just enter a conversation about languages, editors, operating systems, or frameworks. Sometimes we stop discussing a decision and start defending an identity. We no longer ask what the project needs. We want to prove that our favorite tool was the right answer from the beginning.

Imagine that you have spent months saying a language is bad because you watched a video mocking it. Then you find a project where that choice makes sense. Do you change your mind, or do you look for twenty reasons not to admit it? Imagine that you copied an architecture from someone with more experience, but now the pieces do not fit. Do you reconsider it, or keep adding layers to protect the first decision?

I do not offer these examples to make fun of anyone. Changing your mind is hard. It is hard for me too. That is why I value books that do not hand me one more certainty to show off, but give me better questions for examining what I think I know.

Reading fiction does not grant social superpowers

Some attractive claims get repeated too quickly. One says that reading fiction makes you more empathetic. It sounds good, spreads easily, and turns reading into a kind of moral vitamin. The problem is that the evidence does not support such a confident claim.

A 2018 meta-analysis by Diana Tamir and David Dodell-Feder found statistically significant but small effects of reading fiction on certain measures of social cognition. The effect sizes were around g = 0.15 to 0.16. That does not prove that a novel changes the character of the person reading it.

Later reviews also report mixed results, along with problems establishing causation and replicating some findings. Certain kinds of reading may have a small influence on certain measures. It may also be that people with particular abilities or interests choose to read more fiction. Separating those possibilities is difficult.

I prefer the modest version: some studies find small effects on certain measures of social cognition. Nothing more. I do not need to exaggerate the evidence to defend fiction. A story can interest me, unsettle me, or show me a perspective I had not considered, even if I cannot turn that experience into a percentage of personal improvement afterward.

A memory with more pieces to connect

When we try to create something, we do not begin with an empty space. We connect concepts, images, questions, and experiences already stored in memory. Reading across different subjects and genres can therefore give us more raw material for new associations.

The important word is can. Reading twenty novels does not guarantee twenty brilliant ideas. A shelf full of psychology books does not make someone capable of understanding everyone. Creativity is not a loyalty card where every book earns a guaranteed reward.

I do believe, however, that an information diet that is too narrow eventually limits the comparisons available to us. If I consume only programming tutorials, many of my references will probably be other programming tutorials. When I read history, fiction, science, essays, or psychology, I encounter other ways to describe conflict, arrange time, observe a system, or ask why someone acts as they do.

Perhaps one of those connections ends up in a clearer interface. Perhaps it helps explain a decision to someone who is not technical. Perhaps it produces nothing visible and simply stays with me for an afternoon. All three outcomes seem valid to me.

Writing shows me where the idea ends

Reading lets me follow another person's thinking. Writing forces me to find out whether I have a thought of my own.

While an idea remains in my head, it can seem complete. Then I try to put it on a page and find gaps. I use a word I cannot define. I repeat a conclusion because I still do not have an argument. I jump from the problem to the solution without explaining what happened in between. Writing makes those failures visible.

There is limited evidence pointing in an interesting direction. A 2007 study of university biology students found that certain writing activities improved analysis and inference in that setting. It is a specific result, not a universal law. It does not prove that keeping a journal makes anyone better at every discipline. It does remind us that writing can be part of the work of thinking, rather than merely a way to present a thought that is already finished.

A few months ago, I wrote El tiempo que compartimos, dedicated to someone very important to me. About a month and a half ago, I wrote another book for that same person: De mí para ella. I do not mention these books as credentials, and I will not turn them into a story about outcomes. I mention them because writing on your own can exist outside a career, a grade, or a publication.

You can write a scene, a letter you decide not to send, an explanation of something you just learned, or a question you still do not know how to answer. The point is not to imitate a famous author. It is to stay with your thoughts a little longer, until you notice what you can explain and what you were only assuming.

This reaches into code as well. If I cannot explain why I chose a solution without hiding behind complicated words, I may not understand the decision yet. Writing does not guarantee that my reasoning is correct, but it makes it harder to pretend that it is complete.

When reading becomes another dashboard

I have nothing against tracking books, marking pages, or joining a reading challenge. The problem starts when the record consumes the experience.

A streak can encourage you to open a book during a difficult week. It can also push you toward short books just to preserve a number. A list can help you remember what interests you. It can also become a queue of unfinished tasks staring at you with disapproval. A summary can clarify an idea. It can also force you to read with the sole aim of producing content afterward.

Self-determination theory studies how autonomy, competence, and relatedness contribute to motivation. Within that framework, controls and some rewards can weaken intrinsic motivation. That does not mean every goal is bad. It means we should notice what happens when something we chose for pleasure begins to feel monitored.

If a streak helps you, use it. If it makes you anxious about reading, let it go. If you want to abandon a book on page forty, you do not need to defend yourself before an imaginary court. And if you want to reread something familiar instead of moving on to the next title, that still counts as reading, even if an app does not celebrate it.

I am tired of metrics that take a human activity and demand proof of performance. How many books per year? How many pages per day? How many applicable ideas did you extract? Measurement can inform us. It should not decide for us what is worthwhile.

What I like

• Fiction lets me spend time with uncertainty, contradictions, and partial information without rushing toward an answer.
• Essays let me observe how another person organizes and argues an idea, even when I disagree with the conclusion.
• Reading across different subjects gives me more references to connect, without promising that anything useful will come from them.
• Writing confronts me with the parts I still cannot explain clearly.
• Reading for pleasure preserves a space that does not belong to work, school, or a metric.

What worries me

• Turning a reading recommendation into one more obligation for someone who already feels behind while learning programming.
• Using small or mixed studies to promise automatic empathy, creativity, or critical thinking.
• Treating nontechnical books as secret tools for greater output, because that repeats the same problem in a different disguise.
• Dismissing documentation and practice. Reading beyond code complements that work; it does not replace it.
• Confusing the number of books finished with understanding or enjoying them.

Where I stand for now

If you are a teenager learning to program, you do not need to fill every afternoon with courses to prove that you care. There will be time to read documentation, practice, break things, write tests, and build projects. All of that remains necessary.

You can also read a novel because you want to know what happens. You can open an essay because a question is bothering you. You can approach psychology carefully, without using it to diagnose your friends. You can write something no one else will ever see.

None of those activities automatically makes you a better programmer. It does not have to. Sometimes a wider view helps us reconsider an idea, connect concepts, or explain our thoughts more clearly. Other times, a book simply gives us a good afternoon.

That is enough. Not every book has to justify its existence by improving a metric.