[deprecative]

I get so jealous that people can absorb information via books as an adult. I can read the same chapter a hundred times and nothing sinks in.

I know this is off topic but do you, or anyone passing, have a system or tips for how y'all do this? I've got so many programming books but they only collect dust after I read through them without benefit.

[anthomtb]

Are you reading programming books the same way you would read a fiction book? If so, stop doing that.

Programming or any technical learning is a hands on experience. Take notes and apply techniques, using pen-and-paper or the keyboard, as they are presented.

If you really have to just "read" a technical book, IME a less-is-more approach works best. 5-10 minutes at a time, not even a chapter at once. Maybe a few paragraphs if its something really information dense. Funny aside, I find my morning "business" is the perfect time to this sort of reading using the Kindle app on my phone.

[berkes]

I read about fifty books a year for a decade now. Only about four of them per year, are programming books. They are indeed to be read very differently. Here's how I read them, ymmv.

- never in bed. never as audiobook. But sitting. At a table or desk.

- no distractions. At most "focus music".

- read a chapter through. Then read it again and do all excercises (on a computer without wifi)

- make copious notes, highlight quotes, summarize. Most important for me is to write down why I made that note.

- a time (years sometimes) later, do it again. E.g. when having worked on the concepts from a book in real prod projects.

- at most an hour. I have ADHD and my mind often flies everywhere suddenly; time to give up and grab a beer or coffee.

Very few of these work as ebook (Kobo) for me. The formatting of code is poor and diagrams unreadable. Prefer paper or PDF (but read on a computer or tablet without network).

[wyclif]

That's all good advice. You should definitely not read programming books like normal books. But I'll extend it somewhat:

~ Yes, always do all the exercises. It's important how you do them. No copypasting. Enter all the code examples in your text editor of choice and run them if possible. Experiment liberally and don't be afraid of errors; instead, adjust the program in response to the errors. Create a directory and save all your files; don't just keep overwriting the same exercise. This is so you can go back and review if necessary.

~ If possible, always use the PDF formatted version of the book. EPUB and other formats too often don't look good and aren't formatted as the author(s) intended, and PDFs tend to be easier to follow because the page is formatted the same as the print version.

~ I use the Pomodoro technique of working intensely on the book for 25-30 minutes and then taking a short break before continuing. This tends to help me focus and retain more of the book.

Back when I was learning Python, I used two books in sequence, "Python Crash Course" by Matthes and "Think Python" by Downey. This turned out to be fortuitous, because until I started working through them I didn't know they are two completely different approaches: PCC teaches you how to program in Python and TP teaches you computer science using Python. Working through both books consecutively gave me a much better scope and understanding of the language to build on than using one book alone and stopping there.

[berkes]

That's some great advice.

When you say "don't overwrite", di you mean to start from scratch every chapter? I can imagine this would work for me: repetition is key. But also to get frustratingly boring after a few chapters.

I'll just treat is as any trunk based git repo. Commit significant progress, several times per hour. Then rebase to "summarize" my learnings into a history. I'll commit them to a public repo and treat as if that annoying colleague is going to review. Not that anyone will ever read them. I probably won't myself. But the art of rebasing, amending and pulling apart helps me with what would have been the perfect eLearning history.

[wyclif]

No, I just meant save every exercise as a file, like chpt1ex1.js, chpt1ex2.js, &c. A lot of consecutive exercises are just variations on the previous exercise, helping you build your knowledge, but that makes it tempting to overwrite the previous exercise or never save the file. Then you don't have anything to review with after working hard on the book.

[anthomtb]

I agree with all your bulleted points. Especially the "at most an hour". Maybe its age or outside responsibilities, but mental fatigue is a real thing for me, and spending more time than that on technically-challenging materially brings rapidly diminishing returns.

> Very few of these work as ebook (Kobo) for me. The formatting of code is poor and diagrams unreadable. Prefer paper or PDF (but read on a computer or tablet without network).

My ancient (2011) Kindle is borderline useless for technical material but the iPhone app renders diagrams and equations acceptably well (my experience, of course). The small form factor of the phone is helpful too - more desk or table space for notebooks. Mind you, I make heavy use of app limits and downtime so its not the distracting experience of typical smartphone use.

[chrisweekly]

I find my ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet provides fantastic UX for technical PDFs. Zero distractions, handwritten (or typed!) annotations, etc.

[auggierose]

It's not large enough, in my opinion. For PDFs, personally I think that an iPad 12.9 inch is the best choice.

Adding this just in case someone is tempted to get a Remarkable for reading PDFs.

[walteweiss]

Thanks, I thought whether I want ReMarkable or iPad 12.9 for reading PDFs.

I had this the biggest iPad back in the days it was introduced, but gave it to a friend as it felt too big for me, and way too expensive for what I wanted from an iPad. (Basically just a YouTube streamer, and my long obsolete iPad 3 from 2012 still does the job, surprisingly.) I checked iPad Pro 12.9 and there are justifiable prices for used ones, so I think I’ll replace my iPad 3 with this big one, which will allow me to read PDFs more comfortably as well.

Btw, I tried printing some PDFs and I don’t like it that way. I know to each their own, someone likes the books printed, but I’m the opposite of that. So much that I had donated all the physical library of my dad’s books I had in the house after his passing out, as I realized I would never read them in paper.

[rapind]

> do all excercises (on a computer without wifi)

And make sure you are typing the code, and not just copy pasta. Writing it out helps most people process it.

[berkes]

yes! Very much.

And turn off copilot. The code from the book is very likely in its training set. It will produce it almost verbatim. And you learn nothing.

[skydhash]

I don’t mind distractions when learning via books (I wouldn’t be able to finish my degree otherwise), but the other advices still apply. Reading a chapter without doing the exercices is like listening to a lecture without taking notes. You may understand a few things (or everything), but you’ll find that doing practice, drawing diagrams, or summarizing it lead to a deeper understanding. More often than not, you have to dedicate a few days or weeks depending on how dense it is. You find yourself rereading a page from a previous chapter or consulting another book. You don’t have to read it end to end unless you view it as taking a course.

[berkes]

As mentioned, I have ADHD. Which means I cannot handle distractions. So I try to uses processes and tools to manage distractions as much as possible for me.

But I guess a neurotypical zoomer can code fine with a TV in the background, a podcast in one ear, insta and DMs ploinging into their notifications and slack nagging in the status bar. I cannot.

[walteweiss]

Do you keep some notes on the books you read? (I mean online notes here; but if you don’t keep them online, while maintaining the notes, the question is still valid. Maybe you have some system that works for you and you want to share.)

[berkes]

I use Joplin. And that has no way to share a part of my notes. And I'm really not ready to share my woes with my wife with the world. These are all mixed with my Kobo notes.

Also. Notes have always been a mess. I note a lot with pen and paper. Most even. I have piles of random paper. Pen drives with markdown. And large gaps.

If anything, adhd is terrible for consistency in this kind of stuff. Which is why I go full on plain text formats. Any binary, SQLite, cloud whatevs will rot within weeks after me loosing interst. Yet my diary.md and my bookkeeping.ledger, albeit gapped with years, still goes strong.

[vadman]

> Most important for me is to write down why I made that note.

My ears perked at this. Great advice!

[kabes]

I, for one, was a really bad student, until I discovered learning in bed. A desk is still to distracting for me.

In bed, phone out of reach and reading one hour, sleeping half an hour was super efficient for me. You only process material while sleeping anyway.

[ornornor]

> I find my morning "business" is the perfect time to this sort of reading using the Kindle app on my phone.

Beware of hemorrhoids later in life if you’re spending too much time sitting on the throne.

[noufalibrahim]

Yup. The key to learning is doing. You need exercises at the end of every chapter if you want to learn. Math books, programming books etc. And they need to be challenging. That's what helps retention and understanding.

[riidom]

What I like to do, when not under time pressure, is to read such a book cover-to-cover, as a first pass. I get an idea which parts will be difficult for me, and which are probably not.

In this stage, I don't sweat the parts I don't get, I just note for later, that, if these turn out to be important, will require some care, patience and time. I also build some sort of "map" in my mind about the elements that exist, to get an overview.

After doing so, I feel a lot more confident to tackle the topic of the book "properly", doing exercises, etc.

[notapenny]

Take notes as you go or by chapter. If a chapter has a summary at the end, read that first before going through the chapter. If there are code examples, write them out and play around with it. Get the important bits out that way.

Also, realistically you probably won't remember most of what you read. I suck at that as well, but you do build up a lot of peripheral knowledge. You may not remember how to do that one thing, but maybe you do remember that it exists, or that it was in a particular book. Just that type of knowledge has worked well for me.

[dr_kiszonka]

1. Take notes. If you are reading an ebook or a webpage, handwritten notes may be better because you will not be tempted to copy and paste.

2. If feasible for you, consider getting a neuropsychological evaluation to rule out any learning disabilities like adult attention deficit disorder.

[nestes]

Not the original poster, but I learn best reading textbooks cover-to-cover. A couple things that help me:

1) I buy physical textbooks and absolutely destroy them with notes in the margins, highlighting, etc. It helps me to interact with the material instead of letting it wash over me, which means I'm both thinking about it more in-depth and as side effect I'm less bored. Otherwise I'll fall asleep and won't learn anything. 2) I accept that I'm not going to remember the entire book. A lot of books are most useful as references anyway. But if you ever find yourself going, "Oh that's really handy to know," then you can make a special note of it or even put it into flashcards. I've been using Anki. The trick is to recognize what is actually worth doing this for. 3) If something is especially worth knowing, (see point 2), see if you can either do problems from the book or try out the concept in some way if there are no problems available.

If you're reading something just because you feel like you should, you won't get anything out of it (or a least I don't).

[richrichie]

I was a bit like you, read everything cover to cover, until i read Natsume Soseki’s Kusamakura, in which he says:

“Reading a book from the beginning to the end is like insisting on marrying every woman (or man) you fall in love with.”

And that opened my eyes and now i no longer feel in debt to the book or the author :)

[IlliOnato]

When reading a book, I don't do anything special, but I frequently stop and think about what I've just read. It's not something I do by a command, either: it's just that a good book engages my attention, and then I kind of "chew" on it.

Unlike others here, I never take notes, and rarely do suggested exercises. But I read and think through examples; and as to exercises, I do think of "how I would approach it" and "what is that the author wants me to learn from this exercise".

[sn9]

Spaced-repetition and active recall are underutilized tools that can increase your retention of material you deem worth remembering.

Here's an example of how to use it to learn quantum mechanics, but you can imagine how it would translate to technical books for software developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFuu4pesKf0

[anta40]

That's how I learnt programming (self study) as a high schooler more than 2 decades ago: by studying books (affordable fast internet connection wasn't a thing at that time).

Start from chapter 1, study the concepts and play with the code examples a few times till you understand. Usually there are exercises at the end of each chapter. Try to work on those.

[irrational]

Everyone has different learning styles. I retain maybe 90% of what I read, but only 10% of what I hear. So videos and any audio are the worst formats for me to learn anything.

The first step is figuring out what your learning style is.

[matt_j]

This is debunked to some extent. Veritasium made a good video about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA

Personally I find a multi-pronged approach is necessary to really learn anything. Read it. Read it again. Visual guides are helpful. Work some examples. Make some mistakes, debug them, find the corner cases, write tests. Eventually when I've poked around the material for a while it starts to bed in.

Three months later it's forgotten, but when I learn it the next time I move a lot faster!

[IlliOnato]

For me the essential part of comprehending new information is my own thinking on what I'm getting. When reading a book, I stop frequently to think, it's quite natural for me. Often go back a few paragraphs or pages, re-read them with the new understanding, think again, go ahead...

All of this is possible with video and audio in principle, but much less natural and much less convenient; also video somehow "hypnotize" me and I don't feel the urge to think about what I see and hear at the moment; perhaps only afterwards if at all. I have a feeling "oh I get it", but not much remains afterwards.

So I absolutely prefer text to audio or video when learning.

[irrational]

Are you saying that I can learn equally well from reading as well as audio sources and, despite 50+ years of personal experience, I am wrong?

[lelanthran]

Could be. After 40+ years of thinking I learn better from books I changed my mind after seeing one of Freya Holmer's videos.

I can definitely learn faster from a video as long as there are no talk heads in it, and only content.

Trouble is, all the instructional videos I had tried up to that point were crap. I can't think of even one highly recommended programming instruction video that is any good for me.

[samtho]

Disclaimer: this is my own, metaphor-filled hypothesis.

It’s easy to fully internalize generalizations that someone has presented to you, usually because it’s wrapped up in a way that is mostly compatible with how you see the world. Because someone has done the work of distilling this information, you are not able to share in most of the intellectual benefit. It’s the process of having a question, discovering an answer, internalization of the concept, and synthesizing a summary that brings you closer to understanding. It feels like a series of “lightbulb moments” when we consume this content, but it is often shallow and fleeting because the genesis of the idea was not your own. Airport/self-help books are a good example of this mental candy that makes us feel good when reading it but, unless you are able to fully internalize it, are just empty mental calories.

Comprehension and understanding are derived from amassing knowledge a little bit at a time as your mind is ready to advance your understanding. In other words, you really have to be “primed” for knowledge found in books. This is the reason that information you obtain after an adequately-informed struggle stays so salient: your mental model had all the scaffolding around a concept but there was a clear “void” where this answer fits, and if you find that fits super cleanly, it’s extra satisfying.

When consuming information-dense material, you end up with this knowledge back-pressure where it’s floating around your short term memory but won’t be committed to long term memory because there is just no place for it yet. When recalling information in order to create new content with it, and assuming you are challenging yourself, you will end up in situations where there is information starvation (the opposite of back-pressure) where you must either find answers (to fit in your mental model) or find a workaround (ignore the gap).

Some people can just read books and create efficient mental models. Others (myself included) have a limit of how much they can learn in one sitting because our brains need to be fully ready to accept this information.

The last piece of this is the dopamine response cycle that is a positive feedback system (positive as in “more creates more”). Dopamine makes us feel good by rewarding behavior that evolution deemed necessary for species survival (over simplification). Dopamine indirectly triggers long term memory retention because we need to remember why we felt good in that moment so we can replicate it. This used to be, “this berry tastes good, I should remember where this bush was and what the berry looked like.” In the modern context, it ultimately delivers motivation to us because we have adapted to using it to learn new information that is less relevant to survival. Achieving goals and solving problems at hand causes a huge amount of dopamine release. The problem is that we’ve found ways to hijack these systems and short-circuit this feedback cycle so everything had to become way more stimulating.

This got long, but my advice is to work on a project of your choosing that you are intrinsically motivated to do. Begin work on that project and read some of the book that relates to the problem at hand. Repeat this cycle of reading and working, trying to incorporate patterns and concepts you find while reading into your project. Make little goals for yourself every day before your start, and really hold yourself accountable in finishing them.

[darepublic]

When I was a kid my dad taught me to write everything out three times. Applied as a grown up I just write down a lot of notes for things I am learnind

[Sn0wCoder]

Note sure if you have gone very far into the Eloquent JS book but if you do it online it’s interactive. You read a little bit and then write code directly on the page. You then run it to see if it works or go back and read what you missed to correct it. Don’t get me wrong you cannot do the ‘projects’ and other parts are meant to run local, but for learning something quick the online version is all you need. Read, program, read, program…..

[cultofmetatron]

heres how I learn programming languages.

read a page, keep a notebook next to you and rewrite each paragraph in your own words. it forces you to engage more deeply with the material