Just Read the Book Already
For fiction I read e-books.<p>However for all technical books, things like O’Reilly, No Starch, etc, I always buy physical. The decision to do that has very much 10x my learning. Even when it comes to long documentation (MySQL is an astounding 5,000+ pages) I’ll usually print out portions to cover if it’s reasonable.<p>I don’t know why this has increased my learning so much. The best I can come up with is that memory is based on some kind of spatial geography + other stuff. As I’m working on something, like configuring a CentOS server to a lengthy CIS Security Benchmark, I can recall in books what the page looked like, where I was when I read it, the feel of the page, and the part of the text I underlined in pen. Very strange.