Developer Advice to Self

> Why books over blogs, videos or talk? I'd actually say books on the side of those. Shorter formats tend to skim the surface compared to a book, for any topic.

There's more to it than that: Books are random access devices. You can skim portions, or re-read potions in great depth, and when you suddenly realize you aren't understanding something it's typically easier to jump back to the place where you now realize you had lost your way. Videos and podcasts lack the necessary affordances for deep understanding.

Blog posts can be deep too, but by their nature are typically so only for single topics. This can be good or bad, though for the point the author was making, yes, not helpful. But I don't dismiss them at all.

> Books are in-depth, and well-organized knowledge. ...

Books can be poorly written too BTW.

Experience and teaching - those are important. The moment you have to teach someone, you will figure out you don’t actually understand it. Then you will go back and do all the other things you said to prove to yourself everything you know and get better because of it.

Experience is teaching yourself - everyone thinks that you need someone to teach you something. That’s not right - other people giving you thinks to do is the opportunity to teach yourself the best way to do something. Look at it that way and you are going to progress very quickly.