Isn't the struggle of sifting through a labyrinth of physical books and learning how and where to find the right answers part of the learning process?

I would argue a machine that short-circuits the process of getting stuck in obtuse books is actually harmful long term...

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sfpotter 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It may well be. Books have tons of useful expository material that you may not find in docs. A library has related books sitting in close proximity to one another. I don't know how many times I've gone to a library looking for one thing but ended up finding something much more interesting. Or to just go to the library with no end goal in mind...

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calepayson 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Speaking as a junior, I’m happy to do this on my own (and do!).

Conversations like this are always well intentioned and friction truly is super useful to learning. But the ‘…’ in these conversations seems to always be implicating that we should inject friction.

There’s no need. I have peers who aren’t interested in learning at all. Adding friction to their process doesn’t force them to learn. Meanwhile adding friction to the process of my buddies who are avidly researching just sucks.

If your junior isn’t learning it likely has more to do with them just not being interested (which, hey, I get it) than some flaw in your process.

Start asking prospective hires what their favorite books are. It’s the easiest way to find folks who care.

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weakfish 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’ll also make the observation that the extra time spent is very valuable if your objective solely is learning, but often the Business™ needs require something working ASAP

	▲	oytis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's not that friction is always good for learning either though. If you ever prepared course materials, you know that it's important to reduce friction in the irrelevant parts, so that students don't get distracted and demotivated and time and energy is spent on what they need to learn. So in principle Gen AI could accelerate learning with deliberate use, but it's hard for the instructor to guide that, especially for less motivated students

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sfpotter 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're reading a lot into my ellipsis that isn't there. :-)

Please read it as: "who knows what you'll find if you take a stop by the library and just browse!"

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alwa 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I admire your attitude and the clarity of your thought.

It’s not as if today’s juniors won’t have their own hairy situations to struggle through, and I bet those struggles will be where they learn too. The problem space will present struggles enough: where’s the virtue in imposing them artificially?

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bee_rider 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This should be possible online, it would be if more journals were open access.

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sfpotter 5 days ago | parent [-]

Disagree, actually. Having spent a lot of time publishing papers in those very journals, I can tell you that just browsing a journal is much less conducive to discovering a new area to dive into than going to a library and reading a book. IME, books tend to synthesize and collect important results and present them in an understandable (pedagogical?!) way that most journals do not, especially considering that many papers (nowadays) are written primarily to build people's tenure packets and secure grant funding. Older papers aren't quite so bad this way (say, pre-2000).

	▲	alchemism 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've done professional ghostreading for published nonfiction authors. Many such titles are literally a synthesis of x-number of published papers and books. It is all an industry of sorts.
	▲	bee_rider 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think I don’t disagree. Only, it would at least be easier to trace the research concept you are interested in up to a nice 70’s paper or a textbook.

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znpy 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It may well be. Books have tons of useful expository material that you may not find in docs

Books often have the "scam trap" where highly-regarded/praised books are often only useful if you are already familiar with the topic.

For example: i fell for the scam of buying "Advanced Programming in the unix environment" and a lot of concept are only shown but not explained. Wasted money, really. It's one of those book i regret not pirating before buying, really.

At the end of the day, watching some youtube video and then referencing the OS-specific manpage is worth much more than reading that book.

I suspect the case to be the same for other "highly-praised" books as well.

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usefulcat 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You could make much the same observation about online search results.

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GeoAtreides 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I first opened QBasic, <N> years ago, when I was a wee lad, the online QBasic help didn't replace my trusty qbasic book (it supplemented it, maybe), nor did it write the programs for me. It was just there, doing nothing, waiting for me to press F1.

AI, on the other hand...

	▲	nathan_douglas 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I couldn't make head nor tails of the QBasic help back in the day. I wanted to. I remember reading the sections about integers and booleans and trying to make sense out of them. I think I did manage to figure out how to use subroutines eventually, but it took quite a lot of time and frustration. I wish I'd had a book... or a deeper programming class. The one I had never went further than loops. No arrays, etc. </resurgent-childhood-trauma>

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mplewis 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You posted this in jest but it's literally true. You need to read the whole book to get the context. You SHOULD be reading the manuals and the docs. They weren't written because they're fun.

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beAbU 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, or if you are trying to somehow diminish my statement by somehow claiming that online documentation is causing the same magnitude of harm compared to using a book?

Two things:

1 - I agree with you. A good printed resource is incredibly valuable and should be perfectly valid in this day and age.

2 - many resources are not in print, e.g. API docs, so I'm not sure how books are supposed to help here.

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deepsquirrelnet 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s an interesting question isn’t it? There are obvious qualities about being able to find information quickly and precisely. However, the search becomes much narrower, and what must inevitably result is a homogeneity of outcomes.

Eventually we will have to somehow convince AI of new and better ways of doing things. It’ll be propaganda campaigns waged by humans to convince God to deploy new instructions to her children.

	▲	627467 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> inevitably result is a homogeneity of outcomes And this outcome will be obvious very quickly for most observers won't it? So, the magic will occur by pushing AI beyond another limit or just have people go back to specialize on what eventually will becoming boring and procedural until AI catches up

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ori_b 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, yes -- this is why I still sit down and read the damn books. The machine is useful to refresh my memory.

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thinkingemote 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

learning to learn