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Learning by books or videos?

Oreste Abizera on April 27, 2021

Self-taught developer, this is a term which is mostly used in the programming field to refer to someone who has taken programming skills in any way...
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Scott Simontis

I struggler with Attention Deficit Disorder, so for the longest time I could not do videos. I found that if I increase the playback speed to 2.0x, I can stay focused. But regardless of whether you choose books or videos, you will gain very little unless you put into practice what you are learning by creating projects.

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Oreste Abizera

I agree with you on this point since Practising helps to not get bored when you are either taking a video course or reading books.

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Schleidens.dev

Perso j'aime l'apprentissage par vidéos ( bien que j'ai commencer dans les livres, je me rappelle de mes premières expériences en tombant sur le petit pdf HTML CSS du "site du zero"), mais tout juste après avoir pris les bases je suis maintenant plus de type vidéos 😊.

Les livres vous aide a avoir beaucoup de theorie donc très bon pour ceux qui veulent aussi partager leurs connaissance en créant des cours ou des livres.
Les vidéos vous donne la rapidité d'apprentissage et un max de pratiques, vous voyez le code de votre enseignant au moment ou il le fait ce qui vous donne une idée directe.

J'ajoute que faire les deux est très bon si vous pouvez certaines fois ya des choses que vous pouvez mieux comprendre en lisant :).
Si vous ne pratiquez pas au même moment, que ce soit livre ou vidéos les deux peuvent paraître difficile. 😊

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Oreste Abizera

J'aime aussi les vidéos pour le fait que je vois l'instructeur coder à partir de zéro. J'essaie toujours des vidéos pour des concepts plus petits (même si elles sont également bonnes pour des concepts plus importants si vous pratiquez).

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Schleidens.dev

Yes 😊

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brandon_wallace

Use both books and videos is what I suggest. Books are great because some go in-depth. Unfortunately, the latest technology books are not available in the library and they are quite expensive. Videos are good because there are many free online.

So use books when you do not have internet access. You can carry around books anywhere you go. You might get stuck somewhere and be bored, that is a good time to read.
Use videos when you do have internet access. The alternative is to download the video if possible for offline usage.

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Mehmed Duhovic

I think it depends on the concept. I just started learning K8S and let me tell you, learning it using books would be a complete pain, but the videos (and those by good instructors) explain everything like I'm 5. :)

On the other hand - I recently wanted to pick up some advanced tricks in Angular, and I got myself the famous [ng-book] and I realized that I better memorize already known ideas when I read them, compared to watching videos.

So - just learning something -> I'm picking up a video course.
I want to make the knowledge deeper -> I go with a book

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zmadi

Nice article but in my opinion it is of benefit to use both, I for one use videos to understand the concept in a high level and when i think I'm getting hang of things i then switch to a book to see other things that maybe the content creator hasn't covered and also to understand the concept even better.

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Margo McCabe

I think it's important to learn through different methods. Of course everyone is different, but I usually find that some things stick better with written vs. audio vs. visual learning. Luckily there are so many different methods and materials out there to learn from!

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Oreste Abizera

For me, I also recommend that everyone should learn through different methods and figure out the one which works better for him/her.

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Blessing Hirwa

For me the right videos work for me.

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Oreste Abizera

how do you choose the right videos?

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Blessing Hirwa

I do lots of research about the author of the course.

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oreste profile image
Oreste Abizera

that's a great approach

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Kasey Wahl

I've definitely coded along with my fair share of videos, but one of the underrated benefits of books is that there's a greater barrier to publication, so there's usually more quality control in a text. Videos are also typically 1 video per concept, so unless you're coding along with a series of videos, it can sometimes be difficult to effectively transition from one concept to another or check your understanding of a previous concept in the next video.

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Siddharth

I prefer books/articles, because I can move at my own pace and don't have to fiddle with the video settings and stuff

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Oreste Abizera

books and articles are great. But I think videos are also worth some time especially when you want to add some options of understanding things like including sounds,...

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Andrew Baisden

Videos work best for me I like visuals and audio.

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nshimiye_emmy

Great arcticle