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I think both are useful, and generally if you have the time to do both, you should. For example, my go to when using a new framework or library that'll be a core part of a project, is to read its documentation in its entirety. I did this with eg Vue. It's a _huge_ time saver, and the big key, is that it reveals things you would never have known existed! They're things which you wouldn't have stumbled on yourself, but which come in handy in certain moments. Or they're things that would waste your time googling, and which might be difficult to understand out of context. The docs also let you understand the "spirit" of the tool you're using, which will let you work much more smoothly with it, and avoid unintentionally fighting with it and how it was designed to do things. This is also true for more abstract concepts in CS, which might not come up often, but which are smart abstractions that can come into play at key moments in your projects. Also with math, most math learning is done by books -- books with exercises, yes, but still books. But at the end of the day, I think what matters is don't get stuck in one mode. Don't _only_ learn from books, since that won't give you the skills you need. But also don't _only_ learn by doing, since then you'll basically be wasting your time re-discovering the last 100 years of programming/CS experience. Do both! I think an artist in YouTube summarised this best many years ago. He describes 3 ways to improve at something: innate improvement, inspired improvement, and developmental improvement. Innate improvement being by volume--i.e. if you do it every day, you'll get better even if you're not consciously trying to improve. Inspired improvement is using those bursts of inspiration/interest to propel your skills forward. And developmental improvement being the more traditional, sit down with a book and learn/practice approach. All are useful and contribute to improving, so use them all where possible! Jazza recommends making projects that allow for all three possible types of improvement. Video: https://youtu.be/Bu3ulVhO3z4 |