I am posting this question just to get a better understanding of the questions that can be asked on Stack Overflow.

I find that Language Books/Tutorials for popular languages can several answers based on users opinion and cause a discussion.

Why is this a good question when several other requests for books and tutorials are not acceptable?

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I'm surprised it hasn't gotten a historical lock yet. –  Mysticial Aug 30 '12 at 2:40
stackoverflow.com/questions/252985/… - Another similar link, there are many more ... –  Max Aug 30 '12 at 2:45
It's fairly simple: the site guidelines have changed over time. Questions that were permitted 4 years ago are not necessarily welcome today. –  Aaron Bertrand Aug 30 '12 at 3:58
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If you explore the archives, you'll notice a lot of these types of questions. Just browsing the top 5 all-time rep users' top questions/answers turned up these, which would all be considered bad questions on today's Stack Overflow:

You'll notice that these questions are mostly more than a few years old; and have been closed as off topic or not constructive.

Even though those types of open-ended questions generate some really interesting content, you can imagine why the powers that be outlawed them, as they distract attention from the core purpose of a Q-and-A site.

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The questions you're linking to are extremely old. Question constraints were more lax back then, in part because there was a lot less traffic. The first question used to have a disclaimer on it that said something along the lines of "This is not a good example of a Stackoverflow question; it's being preserved because blah blah blah."

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