As the title suggests, this is the topic I have been thinking about today. The inspiration came from a post I saw on the dev.to website. When it comes to learning, do you prefer reading documents or watching videos? I think it can be analyzed from multiple perspectives.
- Learning Progress, or Process
- Industry Field
- What kind of habits should be developed in the future?
1. Learning Progress#
Learning progress should be the biggest factor influencing the learning method.
In the initial stage of learning, watching videos should be the main focus. If you are not familiar with this field, it may seem simple to experienced individuals, but newcomers often struggle to understand it. Therefore, it is best to rely on video tutorials in the early stages.
To give an example, teachers in school provide hands-on teaching because you don't know anything and everything needs to be passed on orally. This is the approach to dealing with newcomers. If you let them learn on their own, they probably won't understand much after a semester of reading. (Of course, geniuses are an exception, but they are not within the scope of this discussion. 90% of us are ordinary people.) Then, in the later stages, it is usually self-study because the basics that need to be taught have already been taught, and students need to research and explore on their own, otherwise they won't be able to fully understand and apply the knowledge.
From this perspective, self-learning seems to be the ultimate learning method.
2. Industry Field#
Taking myself as an example, I prefer reading documents. I occasionally watch videos, but not very often. Because I find it difficult to determine whether the content in the videos is what I need at a glance.
When reading documents, I can use keywords and other methods to quickly find the information I want within a controllable and short period of time. This is extremely convenient for both learning and work.
When it comes to code, documents are the clearest and most distinguishable. But when I was thinking about it, I asked someone, "What learning method do you prefer, watching videos or reading articles?"
The answer was, "Definitely watching videos. Otherwise, why would I buy so many video courses?"
I suddenly realized that I had overlooked another aspect, the influence of the industry on people's learning methods. My girlfriend works in video post-production and often uses software like C4D and PR. I took a quick look and saw rows and rows of functions that made my head spin.
I only use Photoshop to edit images, such as retouching or adding watermarks. I didn't expect video editing to be so complex. So if I didn't learn through videos, I probably wouldn't even understand the functions of the software.
This is another important factor to consider.
3. Additional Thoughts#
How can we cultivate good learning habits?
Regardless of whether we watch videos or read documents, our original intention is to improve our abilities and knowledge. But it seems that learning is a tedious task. From childhood to adulthood, we have been instilled with the concept of "study hard and make progress every day." Everything is aimed at improving grades, and there are significant regional differences in educational resources. This is inevitable due to uneven economic development. Learning is the only way to escape backwardness.
I digressed a bit. Let's talk about learning. There are very few people who can maintain a learning state all the time. Time and energy are limiting factors, as well as the methods used, which is a common problem that everyone talks about. I believe that we should start with our interests and hobbies, cultivate our own interests in the fields we need to learn, and then expand in a 360-degree manner around this direction. Personally, I think this is a very good approach.
When I first started building websites, I knew almost nothing, but I was quite interested in it. With my limited knowledge of front-end development, I started exploring and gradually learned about major website platforms, such as GitHub, Vercel, and Cloudflare. As I played around more, I began to understand areas like PHP and system administration. I stumbled through learning basic knowledge.
During this process, I met many friends who helped me and made progress in related technologies. At the same time, I also provide technical support in my field to them. This seems to embody the spirit of open source, not working in isolation, and discussing various topics together.
Over time, I found that my knowledge seemed to have become richer compared to before. This is a correct way of learning. So I believe that learning through interests and hobbies is a positive and enthusiastic approach.
Let's talk about your learning method. Leave a comment or send me an email to discuss together!