Ask HN: Do you prefer to learn programming from books or video courses?

Books.

I'm okay with videos: they definitely add something to the discussion, particularly when deciding if I want to learn something.

But for me, when trying to go deep, I prefer being able to flip pages (e-books are great for reference, not as great for deep reading, for me) and the information percolates better.

But you should also control for the age of the respondents--I'm relatively old at 48.

Books (or papers), but language and methodology reference materials NOT tutorials. I do not find video useful. Video is, for me, too information poor.

I like to learn programming and coding by reading other people's code. Real code is usually more instructive that code fragments created to illustrate a point.

I am a fan of leaning on my own, but direct personal contact with a knowledgeable human does aid the learning process.

Both -- there is so much to learn and forget -- practice and note taking is essential.

If a book has 30 pages in a chapter, I'll always have about 2 pages of notes at the end of it. So at the end of a book I usually have a 24 page mini-book/doc that I can refresh my memory quickly. In fact, I read these mini-books all the time when I'm stuck in traffic or waiting on anything.

When I want to "master" something I prefer books. But a lot of times I just want to know "enough" of something to start working with it. For such things I prefer videos.

One thing I have noticed that before using any AWS service for the first time, I look for tutorial videos for it. This way I can see somebody clicking through screens to set up the service in AWS console. This helps immensely to start using the service as quickly as possible. After watching the videos I skim through the AWS docs to look for gotchas and then start using the service. Slightly off topic, one thing I have found very helpful in learning AWS is their FAQs. I make sure I read all of them if I am planning to use a service.

For programming, I didn't find the video tutorials very useful. For programming, I prefer tutorials, books, and documentation.

I prefer just getting code, editing and figuring out what it's doing. So learn by doing! If i'm super stuck I use google. This is how I learnt programming at a young age(12), back in 2002 - at the time I didn't have money for books, and there wasn't really any programming videos about. No stackoverflow then either - you'd have to experiment a lot more with code to work out what was going on.

Learn by practice!

Just realised this seems to not be the case as much anymore, as emphasis is on speed of learning, not really depth.

Occasionally i'll watch videos though too - but unless i'm practicing i tend to forget it quite quickly.

I did try using books from the library when I was younger - but I don't think I got past the first 2 chapters of a c++ book without getting bored. Being able to take small video games and edit them kept my interest and passion much more.

Both first I watch the videos the I read the book. For me it's better to see someone explaining how to do things and then if I need to go deeper I read the book. Something like going to college first I listen the instructor then I go home and read my book.

I prefer reading books, so I can jump to where I'm interested in.

For videos, I have to concentrate the whole time, which is tiring.

Video courses. That's how I taught myself Java at 12, and why I never touched my Objective-C book until college.

Text for well-defined subject matter. I only like videos that discuss high-level concepts.

I don't like the screencast kind. In fact, one advice I'd give to my younger self is to try not to read and watch tutorial-style content (and this includes many books too!).

I prefer to use both. They provide different approaches to learning, that complement each other.

Books. However, I have taken one free Udacity class and it was pretty badass.

Books and StackOverflow and videos more or less in that order.