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> I'd like to look back and say "this year, I made X and Y" rather than "I read about X and Y".

A false dichotomy IMO. What I want is "this year, I understood X and Y", and understanding a thing involves both making and reading (most of the time).

It's not a false dichotomy, it's an opinion - mine. An opinion about personal satisfaction. To me, reading and learning is great. I do it for a living, basically. But building something is much, much more satisfying for me. Not because I might have to understand something new along the way - that's an added bonus. But even building something new for which I didn't need to acquire new knowledge will give me a better feeling. It's about "creativity" in the original sense of the word. Perhaps it's because creating something is harder than reading something that makes it that way, although even reading something very difficult and finally getting it still can't beat "making".

I find that a combination of reading and doing does the job. Do, until you hit a wall, or you realize that there must be some way to do things better. Then read, and try to see if somebody else has found that way. Obviously, sometimes also just read because it sounds like you would like to know what the book says. Rinse and repeat.

By the way, books are easy to get for free these days on the net. I remember 20 years ago when I would spend crazy money on books ... No more! Also, these days I read more papers than books. Which are also easy to get for free.

> Have you ever had this happening to you: when a teacher shows you a new method to compute something, it all sounds perfectly clear and simple, until you sit down and try it out on an unseen problem yourself?

Yes! I think it's the raison d'etre for sites like StackOverflow.

Somebody once told me that since make was created, nobody has written their own makefile. All makefiles are decendants of the ur-makefile.

> But increasingly, I realize that my time is better spent building something myself.

> Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

-- Albert Einstein

I think you can also read in various ways. You can just absorb it uncritically, or try to find flaws or supportive anecdotes for it, or just freely associate about the thoughts and emotions it makes one aware of etc. But he and you do have a point, there's got to be a balance. Second-hand expertise is valuable, we can't all find out which berries are toxic individually. But with many things that aren't quite so critical, learning through mistakes can be quite empowering, and sometimes you find out it's not a mistake, but something new and good outside of the usual rut.

I agree that practice is equally important, but you certainly need to have an understanding of the material and what is going on prior to implementing something or working through a proof.