Ask HN: Do you prefer to learn programming from books or video courses? - rayalez
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davelnewton
Books.

I'm okay with videos: they definitely add something to the discussion,
particularly when _deciding_ if I want to learn something.

But for me, when trying to go deep, I prefer being able to flip pages (e-books
are great for reference, not as great for deep reading, for me) and the
information percolates better.

But you should also control for the age of the respondents--I'm relatively old
at 48.

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jfaucett
I don't think this is age dependent. I prefer books to videos for learning
programming stuff and I'm in my late 20s. The book/ebook gives me time to
review/parse/think about what the code is doing. I can also proceed at my own
pace, skimming over stuff thats irrelevant and spending more time on parts I
need to think about. Doing any of that is difficult with a video.

~~~
davelnewton
I suspect there's a correlation between age and preference, but this is (a)
just a hunch, and (b) just a generality--there are always outliers.

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drallison
Books (or papers), but language and methodology reference materials NOT
tutorials. I do not find video useful. Video is, for me, too information poor.

I like to learn programming and coding by reading other people's code. Real
code is usually more instructive that code fragments created to illustrate a
point.

I am a fan of leaning on my own, but direct personal contact with a
knowledgeable human does aid the learning process.

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Meltdown
Both -- there is so much to learn and forget -- practice and note taking is
essential.

If a book has 30 pages in a chapter, I'll always have about 2 pages of notes
at the end of it. So at the end of a book I usually have a 24 page mini-
book/doc that I can refresh my memory quickly. In fact, I read these mini-
books all the time when I'm stuck in traffic or waiting on anything.

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pritambarhate
When I want to "master" something I prefer books. But a lot of times I just
want to know "enough" of something to start working with it. For such things I
prefer videos.

One thing I have noticed that before using any AWS service for the first time,
I look for tutorial videos for it. This way I can see somebody clicking
through screens to set up the service in AWS console. This helps immensely to
start using the service as quickly as possible. After watching the videos I
skim through the AWS docs to look for gotchas and then start using the
service. Slightly off topic, one thing I have found very helpful in learning
AWS is their FAQs. I make sure I read all of them if I am planning to use a
service.

For programming, I didn't find the video tutorials very useful. For
programming, I prefer tutorials, books, and documentation.

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LifeQuestioner
I prefer just getting code, editing and figuring out what it's doing. So learn
by doing! If i'm super stuck I use google. This is how I learnt programming at
a young age(12), back in 2002 - at the time I didn't have money for books, and
there wasn't really any programming videos about. No stackoverflow then either
- you'd have to experiment a lot more with code to work out what was going on.

Learn by practice!

Just realised this seems to not be the case as much anymore, as emphasis is on
speed of learning, not really depth.

Occasionally i'll watch videos though too - but unless i'm practicing i tend
to forget it quite quickly.

I did try using books from the library when I was younger - but I don't think
I got past the first 2 chapters of a c++ book without getting bored. Being
able to take small video games and edit them kept my interest and passion much
more.

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lordluisv
Both first I watch the videos the I read the book. For me it's better to see
someone explaining how to do things and then if I need to go deeper I read the
book. Something like going to college first I listen the instructor then I go
home and read my book.

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billconan
I prefer reading books, so I can jump to where I'm interested in.

For videos, I have to concentrate the whole time, which is tiring.

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tradersam
Video courses. That's how I taught myself Java at 12, and why I never touched
my Objective-C book until college.

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auganov
Text for well-defined subject matter. I only like videos that discuss high-
level concepts.

I don't like the screencast kind. In fact, one advice I'd give to my younger
self is to try not to read and watch tutorial-style content (and this includes
many books too!).

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urahara
I prefer to use both. They provide different approaches to learning, that
complement each other.

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crispytx
Books. However, I have taken one free Udacity class and it was pretty badass.

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zuzuleinen
Can you tell me which Udacity class you took? Thanks!

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brudgers
Books and StackOverflow and videos more or less in that order.

