Books or video tutorial: the best way to learn coding?

I think the answer is "yes". In other words, both.

I'm only speaking for myself here, when I say the following things... for me, I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to learning.

This happens first and foremost by getting distracted with social media (Facebook, Twitter, HN).

To quote Cal Newport (an author who speaks on this very thing) from his book Deep Work. "To learn hard things quickly you must focus intensely without distraction."*

So let's say you're not aiming to be quick about learning to code, necessarily. It still follows that not being distracted is key.

I think covering both books and video helps you get information from multiple inputs, and covers different learning styles. ANYTHING to get the concepts cemented in your head.

Most of all, do what you can to learn in an environment where you're not bombarded by many things designed to distract you.

I recommend this book. I'm in the process of reading it now, myself. I feel like he's talking directly to me, and that I could have been MUCH more effective in both learning and work, had I discovered this MUCH sooner.

Good luck. I'd be curious to hear how you're making progress on your learning journey.

*Newport, C. (Grand Central, 2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World [Kindle version, page 36]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Both actually.

Speaking for myself... I start with video. It is easier to find, easier to follow and easier to implement. Now when you finish with video course, search for "best" or "amazing" book for that particular language or framework.

Because of video course introduction, most part of the book will be like "seen somewhere" or "read somewhere". so the reading of book becomes tolerable and more understanding.

Bottom line, (I believe ) Video courses are never enough and books are long and difficult. So, start with video course and finish it with a book.

IMP point : practice while going through the whole process.

I'm more of the type to prefer textual content. A lot easier to scan through and process at your own pace than video content that you naturally are expected to perceive in a time-based manner.

Depends on what I'm trying to learn. If it's a programming language, or something math-heavy, I prefer books. If it's GUI programming, I prefer videos. I tried learning Android programming from their official documentation, and felt lost with all those hyperlinks that made a horrible directed multicyclic graph. I did not consider books for this because it's a fast-moving target. I learnt python entirely from their official documentation.

It really depends on the person. Personally I like official tutorial webpages and videos for learning the basics, and books for gaining a deeper context or best practices.

When I need to learn a new language I tend to buy a book for the first few chapters so I can learn the basics of the language(variables, control structures, etc). Then I'll subscribe to whatever the most popular video site is pick a project I want to implement and start working on it and when I need to know how to do something look for a video on it and read the transcription since I don't actually like watching the videos.

When trying to learn programming for the first time, find a book that has lots of exercises. I used an earlier edition of http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/, but I've heard that people like "learn python/java/ruby/... the hard way".

As others have said, both have their place for me.

I like videos that give me a conceptual overview, or tell me the thinking behind why they coded something in a certain way. For details and reference I use books (unless it's a fast-changing technology, in which case the language/tool's docs are where I go), or I need a deeper dive on something that's not just code.

Videos are a good starting point. But both books and videos are bad since most stuff is dated. Tech keeps getting updated and you are stuck with the version you "studied". So, IMO, get started with videos, learn using books/blogs/stackoverflow etc. but keep revisiting so that you are really on top of things.

To me, books are a great high-bandwidth way to absorb the full breadth of the topic. Videos are more linear, and slower. But videos can help if you lack motivation or focus to read books.

But either way, to internalize the learnings requires doing many coding exercises.

Videos can be better for high level content, but books and blogs are better for code. I say can because producing high quality programming related videos is rare from what I've seen (do we need something like markdown for videos?).

Books can be a pretty lonely way to learn technical material. Videos, much less so but I find it can take a bit longer to grasp video content because you always have to be engaged since it is not easily scannable.

I prefer books - or really, just plain old tutorials on the web. I created https://enlight.ml to do just that. Check it out! :)

Text hands down. We can easily scan and skip parts that we do not need. Videos are such a drain on time and are boring. Its hard to go back and forth.

Brute Force