There are really salient points in the article about how the general purpose smartphone&#x2F;tablet adds small friction to simple tasks that end up being large distractions.<p>I have a huge collection of print books and that is my preferred way to learn because I can step away from the computer and digest what I am trying to learn.  An epaper reader would be a semi-acceptable compromise, but the tactile feedback of page flipping and bookmarks are also very gratifying.  A physical book also has the tangible affect of being physically present; not something to just purchase and file away.  Generally I don&#x27;t want to search books as I&#x27;m trying to understand overall concepts, or perhaps quickly consult the ToC to zip to a specific concept.  When I want to search I want to search a code base, API docs, or something like stackoverflow&#x2F;mailing lists&#x2F;newsgroups so I&#x27;ve never missed that from ebooks.<p>For note taking, I can use either pen&#x2F;paper, or a laptop with a simple vim session.  The paper is most useful if there are non-text things that need to be quickly noted, and can be turned into charts&#x2F;graphs or whatever later on if needed.