curation is very expensive (in time) and nearly impossible to do without already being a SME who knows what's good/bad content. I have spend weeks trying to piece together curriculum for a "free" learning path on some topic I desire to learn. It's exhausting.

In that case, why not just find a good Udemy course after maybe a few hours of research and throw $11 at it when it's "on sale" (I hate the psychology there, but that's a whole other bag of worms) when I just got back from paying $12 at Starbucks?

Of course, I'm not a web dev and don't need full books whenever that tech inevitably comes my way. I love books for my own domain, and several of them are well worth their weight in gold, since all the amazing tech out there isn't just freely available to view with an inspector.