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Comment by tjr | Hacker News Reader

It has been generally agreed for years that different people learn best differently. I have found that I tend to learn very well reading books and taking notes (and, as applicable, doing projects) and not so great watching videos. I'd probably even prefer audio lectures rather than video content, if maximum learning was my goal.

I find LLM learning to be mixed. I can ask questions, seek clarification, and that helps me get to a specific answer quickly, or helps me to get past misconceptions quickly. But it seems to fall somewhere in between reading books and watching videos for me -- I still feel like I learn best through books, even if it takes longer. Specifically, it feels like actually being a little bit harder forces me to think deeper and/or retain more.

I do not wish for LLM learning to go away, but nor do I wish for it to replace books. I hope that many people continue to write in traditional formats.

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It's interesting about text versus video -- I never ever look for video instruction for code, probably because I just came up on thick-ass books from the library and actual text on the computer in the 90's.

THAT SAID, a while back I stumbled across some Three.js video tutorials on YouTube by Wael Yasmina [0] that were so informative and crystal clear that it completely changed my opinion about learn-code-through-video. I guess it just depends on the subject matter and presentation. I'm way more open to it now, and find some odd videos on there that cover topics that never seem to come up in blog posts and searches. YMMV

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHIm_RXfYBM (example)

YouTube is actually one of my very first places to go for new concepts. For example, one of the recent Advent of Code puzzles was solvable with "coordinate compression," a technique I had never heard of before. I didn't find much, and what I did find wasn't an especially high-quality presentation, but it did teach me a magical new concept that helped me to finish the puzzle.

I have also benefited so much from MIT OCW lectures. The quality of their teaching is so high that it showed me that when my children go to college, it will be worth it to send them to a much more expensive elite school.

LLMs can be incredible at cutting through misconceptions. I remember learning to code 20 years ago, and getting stuck building a mental model of a Hash. I remember being able to recite the definition verbatim, but I just couldn't put it into use until it eventually clicked after what felt like an eternity.

I think about how an LLM could have dramatically shorted that, like it did recently to teach me Bayes' theorem.

This seems like an example of what the parent comment was saying, which is that everyone learns best in different ways. Learning via book works better for them, but maybe not as well you you. It still isn't clear to me that an LLM would be more effective for everyone in the circumstance you described though, and I think that's the point they were trying to make; new learning techniques are mostly helpful because of the variance in how people learn, and in practice the best choice is likely going to depend at least as much on the individual as the circumstance and topic.

Yes! Hooray for whatever helps you learn best!

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