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Here is an excellent collection of 45 free books in PDF format which I found here — "Programming Notes for Professionals" books.
The PDFs contain this on one of their very first pages:
Please feel free to share this PDF with anyone for free
This ${insert title here} Notes for Professionals book is compiled from Stack
Overflow Documentation, the content is written by the beautiful people at Stack
Overflow. Text content is released under Creative Commons BY-SA, see credits at
the end of this book whom contributed to the various chapters. Images may be
copyright of their respective owners unless otherwise specified.
Because of the range of software development related topics covered, I thought this might be of interest to a large fraction of people on SN.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:06PM
Not sure the question isn't intended to be rhetorical, but here goes.
Because often the information in a reference manual is just that: A reference for someone who already knows something, but wants to clear up points of syntax, usage, or whatever.
The light, helpful material that you "Wade Through" is written on a level that is much more tutorial in nature, easier to grasp for someone who doesn't already intimately know something, and furthers knowledge.
The difference is approximately comparable to a tutorial on a command vs. its man page: The tutorial is less complete and more comprehensible and useful, while the man page is densely more complete, and comprehensible, and frequently less useful.
Sometimes you need the dense reference information. And sometimes you need the practical, useful information.
Really, a friendly tutorial is something you "breeze" through. Dense reference materials are what you "wade" through.