Comment by adamkittelson

I think it's just different learning styles. My preference for learning e.g. a new programming language has always been to read a book cover to cover as the first step (if it's a language established enough to have a book anyway). Note that it's not important that I actually understand everything on this first pass. The cover to cover is mostly about getting the lay of the land so I know what exists, then, even years later when I have a problem that could be solved by using some bit of the language that I read about but didn't really understand but vaguely recall is a thing it springs to mind and I can do my deep dive on that aspect then.