it is not either or. You can do both.
I'm sure a swimmer who reads books about swimming in addition to swimming is better all else being equal than a swimmer who just swims.
I'm sure a swimmer who reads books about swimming in addition to swimming is better all else being equal than a swimmer who just swims.
Can you show me such a book? Ie a book that teaches one to swim (different strokes etc) aimed at a professional swimmer (athlete).
I think your opinion on OSS/large codebases makes sense, but I don't think it's an either/or situation: reading should _support_ actual coding, similar to how studying a grammar textbook for a foreign language is there to support actually speaking/listening/communicating in that language.