Hacker News Reader

A book a month would be a more achievable goal, if still unreasonable if they're all technical books. You can't speed read technical books, specially if they're about new topics that require practical exercises.

Reading x books doesn't count as learning x topics.

View on HN

I don't know if there are people who can learn complex topics by reading a book, but I certainly can't. Without any context, I can't keep enough of it in my head for long enough to build a mental model of the whole system. At best I'll come away with a vague familiarity with some of terminology. I have to actually implement parts of it to retain it.

Agree with this sentiment. With the exception of very specific topics that I've encountered in the wild but have no theoretical context on (e.g. Async JS), I have never been able to learn from a book. Tutorials/blog posts are great for this because you can stop and implement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com