The only real way of learning is by doing. I took the wrong approach for two years, read everything and anything. I learned a lot, but when I found myself sitting down and coding I realized that it's impossible to remember everything you've read in relation to a particular piece of code. I'm never going to remember that snippet on page 741 or 1400 as it relates to my program because I've only ever glanced at it.
Pick up something you are unfamiliar with, pick a small project (make a calendar, contact form, something small), find a language you want to learn, and get to googling/hacking away.
I mean that's what I do, and I actually know angular reasonably well, so I'm not complaining about this particular case. I do agree that you learn by doing, at the same time though, any technology will have some specifics as to how you put things together and you can either (a) learn those by trying things out and see what sticks (b) learn from people who had the same issues and study how they solved it. A combined approach is probably the best since if you do only (a) you might miss some details that might be important for really leveraging the power of the platform.
And what you are arguing is exactly the approach that Rails tutorial takes. You are building something and the book serves as your guide to reduce guesswork.
Exactly. It's why I dropped out of school. Too much theory. I realized after two years I knew a bit, but not REMOTELY as much as I would learn had I spent those two years absolutely learning and implementing things I wanted to do. Not learning some deprecated language over the course of 6 months from a "professor" who only really wants a paycheck.
Pick up something you are unfamiliar with, pick a small project (make a calendar, contact form, something small), find a language you want to learn, and get to googling/hacking away.