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When I'm tasked with learning something new - like Rust, for example - my inclination is to go pick up a book about it and read it cover to cover, working through the examples as I do. I spent six years of college practicing learning this way - by reading and working through controlled examples - and I'm really good at it. It seems to me that the entire point of college is to sharpen your ability to learn things from reading books and practicing with them. Back in the days before open offices, when I had a cubicle, I would always have a book open about whatever the newer thing I was supposed to be mastering was, and I would alternate between programming and reading: code for a while, read while the thing was compiling or starting up, go back to coding and testing, read some more and work an example, etc. I learned almost everything that I really have true mastery of that way. What I discovered the hard way, when open offices took over, is that seeing somebody reading a book PISSES EVERYBODY OFF. I can't comprehend why, but when people could see that I was reading a book - even a book about Java or XML or web services or whatever happened to be new at that time - they would come over within a few minutes and ask "what are you reading? Why are you reading that? Shouldn't you be programming? Aren't you a programmer? Why aren't you staring at your computer all the time?" Even people that had no business policing my time. So, of necessity, I shifted from reading printed books - which are much better quality and more efficient - to reading online documentation because staring at the monitor all day long, with fingers on the keyboard, is required in an open office, whether the boss is around or not. |
That's a red flag right there.
I've seen companies where you were expected to have a stack of books on your desk or in a bookcase in your office. Not reading was considered bizarre behavior.