Errata in Programming Books?

WgT2 asks: "I recently have set my mind to learning to code PHP. Not being a programmer, yet, I went out and got myself a book on the subject from a very trusted, at least in my eyes, publisher (and they still still are). So far so good. However once I got down to trying the code out myself I have found too much errata for someone who has just scratched the surface in learning the ins and outs of programming. I was wondering just how common place Slashdot readers have found errata in the code examples of programming books they have purchased?"

Comments

Errata Schmerrata

[tres]

Errors in examples give you the responsibility of thinking about the code. You've got to understand what it is doing, rather than just mimicking the examples.

Believe me, I've spent my fair share of time and frustration trying to debug bad examples. It took a long time to learn, but when I don't trust the author, I find that the errors are more challenging than frustrating.

A couple of O'reilly books in particular, Steve Oualline's Practical C Programming and his Practical C++ Programming purposely have errors in the examples for just this reason.
The difference is, Steve tells you that the errors are there. It's a good learning technique, and forces you to pay attention to the concepts rather than the examples.