Slightly disagee.

Personally, I read way less traditional books when it comes to learning stuff. Especially the “utility”/“tutorial”/“handbook”. Top nitch books talking about general principles I’d still read.

Especially for books that need to teach me a subset of a certain discipline - in the past I’d get 4-5 (or at least samples), and try to find the parts that are of interest to me in a style that fits me. Novadays I’d just ask Claude to explain things in a form that I like, with pretty illustrations from Imgen :)

E.g. I don’t think I’ll read the animal books from O’reilly again. But an equivalend of “Thinking in C++” or “Pearls of programming” of a new field? Sure.