Not that books are useless or you shouldn't read them.
I think part of the problem is that the author of TFA sorta "buried the lede" and didn't really get to the point until very near the end. I suspect a lot of people got bored and quit reading before that point. Honestly, I did, and it wasn't until my second reading that I got what he was saying near the end, which is admittedly a somewhat different take.
"Books work, but they're not the complete solution" is a much better title, but then us as the audience don't need to read a multi-page Medium article type rant to know that.
To be honest, you could replace 'book' with 'video', 'article', 'podcast' or any other medium people learn from and the article could stand pretty much as is and give the same general point.
The whole article could probably be more effectively re-written with the focus on time and learning, using different media as well as books as an example and make the point stronger. By choosing books as a focus, the author loses the main point and doesn't really get to it until the end, making the article, as you and other commenters pointed out, ranty and a slog to read through.
Specifically, the "premise of the article" being "I invested 15-20 hours reading this book and, boohoo, I’m not a subject matter expert on the book’s topic" is nowhere to be found in the article, at least by my reading. Or maybe it is actually there and I missed it?
I suppose the author of the article would help his/her case with examples of how you can improve on what can be communicated by a book, but I reckon that might actually be impossible.
It's both. The proposal is at the very, very end, after a boring, long-winded screed about how everything else doesn't work.
> the author gives a link to his proposal
I took a look. I don't see any significant difference between this and a traditional textbook.
I think he emails problem sets at appropriate times after you finish the book to ensure you remember everything.