Which is better, a Course (Videos) or a Book to learn Software Development
In this article I wanted to address a point that I have been asked a lot, which is what is better when you want to learn a new technology, understand software development, which is the topic we follow on this channel, although you can also use it for any other type of content but well there you may have to make small adaptations then
What is better, a course or a book?
What is better, a course is understood in videos or a book, that is, a PDF, an epub, a mobie or whatever, which format is better, that is, which format is better than the other, and here I am going to plunder the answer, and that is that there is no one. format better than the other and the answer is quite obvious but it is that the one that best suits your needs is basically that, even so I am going to give you my reasons why and I will once again encourage here the video why I like the book format more than the video format, which is good, that is, the online course, which is what we are talking about.
Personal experience when consuming courses and books
So I'm going to tell you a little about why I do this and from there I'm also giving you a little bit of the answer. I'm a slightly selfish person in the sense that I started making these videos and this because I like to practice. with many technologies, as you have seen in my profile, but like a lifetime, it takes me a while to develop one, then another, then another. When, for example, I return to Flask, it's been like a year since I've touched a code in Flask, there's always some gaps that, hey, what did this do, what did that do, what did I install, etc. So sometimes it is not enough to see the source code and that is why I started recording the videos to have an exact reference of what It's what each thing did.
When implementing it, what was the problem? Well, my courses, as you can see, are 40 or 50 hours long, we do a lot of things, sometimes the title is not exactly what we are going to do because sometimes it is very difficult to translate it into a title. What are we really going to do and well we really can't search for content in the video unless at least we use an Artificial Intelligence there that doesn't come to the point is to say if you would like to search what is looking Look for me in this certain pool of videos when it is written like that Good code would be a nightmare but well I suppose that at some point it can be done if it can no longer be done with Artificial Intelligence but we cannot do it manually.
Searching books for a key text is direct
So sometimes it becomes a Book when again we had that gap that we do not remember what we are doing here or what we installed etc. and we want to have that quick reference to be able to continue moving forward in whatever we are going to do then The videos or the courses fell short in that sense, if it was a good way, as they say, to obviously consolidate them with knowledge that it is good that we are learning a new technology or directly have it there as a reference, which was the first point I was telling you but Even so, it fell quite short for me, so that's when it occurred to me to write books that
I have been around since more or less since 2011 2009 and I am always writing posts for my blog so I said why the hell don't you write a book precisely about this so I present the courses in book formats that is a point that I also missed the beginning and it is that we are talking about which courses and books in my particular case have the same content or in your case if you are looking for any other author or content creator you have authors who have similar content that serves you for your purpose which is learning a new technology, so that's when it occurred to me to create a book and here you can see what my favorite format is, which is the book format, why it is my favorite format precisely because of the versatility it has, that is, here, yes. I don't remember what a code does, I just quickly search for the key text and find it, unlike the course, where you have to navigate class by class minute by minute.
The book is a much faster and much more versatile format when we are here referencing by searching here for any term and here we have an explanation, that is, we do not have to look for that exact moment in the video that in the end we are looking for is by inertia to that tells us or gives us an explanation of what we are doing at that point here we already have the direct reference and again surely if you do not understand this, which was the doubt that you had already in the first coincidence, you will have the answer, that is to say you have a much faster and more accurate reference compared to videos.
The book is an easy to save format, with few kbs or mbs compared to the gbs of a video
Another thing we gain here is that this is a great song and a hoot. The next thing we gain here is that it is obviously a much lighter format, that is, we can have Well, I don't see it on the phone but I see it, for example on the tablet I see it. We can also have a Kindle there, we can have all our books there, we can have more books than we are going to read in the year in our lives and that weighs practically nothing. Try to do the same with a course of this magnitude. Well, I'll come back here, for example, about 20 30 40 hours that will easily cost you 20 or 30 GB so they are obviously not there
storable apart from the fact that many times it is not so easy to download it, for example in my case, you can buy it here directly at Academia and you can download it one by one, which is the way that I allow at the moment. Regardless of the technology, usually almost no one allows you to download it or many of the basic rules and therefore you have to figure out how to get the author to enable the download and enable it because of how poorly that platform works. Sometimes when a lot of time passes you are no longer allowed that download option but you still have to download it one by one and there are other platforms for example packbot that does allow you to download them in full but again you have to do the same thing again All of this is not only if you like the course. If not, if you want to download it completely to have it locally and for it to take 30 GB on your hard drive, you also have to see how you can at least download it because no matter how much it is This is not infinite in terms of the courses here hosted on a website, it is subject to the fact that the website is certain or directly the course happens after an error occurs or something like that, that is to say, what is always the volatility in which we have in this type of services but no one can take a PDF away from you. Well, unless you simply have it in one location and lose that device, but obviously when you download this type of resource you have to copy it in two or three parts to precisely save a backup of it, therefore, if you follow that criterion that It will always be yours and no one will be able to take it away from you and therefore you always have that support material so you have another point as to why I prefer the book format over online courses.
Easy update in books
Another highlight that in this case is very particular to me is that I update my courses; For example, right now this year, when I am recording this video, I updated the course from Laravel 6 to Laravel 11, sorry, the first course that I took from Laravel was 6 and I am still maintaining it to a certain extent until 11. It's 5 years. but there I keep all the previous code from the previous versions because obviously you are not going to lose it and I would see this in another video but I keep them there; That is to say, it is not a total renewal usually because it is practically impossible, for example speaking through Laravel I have been 4 months and a version of Laravel comes out every year and I have already been recording the total renewal for 4 months and I have not finished so Imagine that Just when I finish, Laravel 12 comes out and I have to start it again, I never finish and I spend all my time recording the same thing and there are no important changes in the syntax either, but there are people who are a little bothered that hey, look at this code here, it says that It's a 10 without not an 11 what a nightmare and well that's another topic but what I mean is that you will always find there a hybrid usually something that in my case does not happen with books why because when I go to take out here A new version takes a while to update all the references es10 which would be the previous version to pass it to an 11 it is as simple as simply changing a number for me as well as the year or I simply execute it again Command and copy and paste again The response from the console, the images, I also do not try to generate the dates and all that type of things to appear, therefore here as I also recently launched the total renewal of the book, that is, I completely transferred it to Laravel 11, it is much easier to do that migration and you will not be left with that kind of hybrid, that is something that I particularly do not know of any other person who does that job.
That is to say, always updating all your books, usually a person launches a version and forgets about it and then 3 years later renews it again but it is not a free renewal like I do, so there I also have Well there is that point Because surely there are other people that working in some similar way I have not found it, but there may be.
People prefer to consume videos
But no matter what happens with the video format, because if I didn't like it I wouldn't do it well, obviously, right now we are in a society in which people prefer to consume videos, and That is, something more audiovisual that is obviously much easier to understand and here we see or I want to give you another point as to why sometimes the video format is also interesting or the online courses or rather.
In which case would I choose the video format instead of the book format?
For example, if you wanted to learn a technology that has many little windows, again here I am speaking a little more generally, suppose it is Blender or directly also scout or Android Studio could also be the part, for example of managing the views, I go here Find a image, let's see if I can find something, for example, this one has a lot of little icons up here, this one doesn't have that much no matter how much it is, but in terms of time it is a little more confusing; It is also a technology that has many options because it is very integrated, that is, there are many ways to do the same thing and it is always done with little buttons and above all the view management part is also a small hell and in Blender or for example unreal We also have many little buttons, so reading it in a book if you are learning this technology for the first time, that is, you are new to this technology, reading it in a book is true hell.
When I was learning The final one to do a simple operation took like four or five pages and the worst thing about it is not that but that usually the books do not have the latest version of the Software to date because they update this every year and there are always variants, So to that you have to add those variants that you have to translate, which is much more digestible if you see it directly from a resource such as a video that has both audio and has as a video, therefore the highlight they have here videos is that books are always more abstract than consuming it through a video that will always show you step by step, so in those cases and only in those cases again it is how I choose the video format over the books.
For me, the book is king so well it was simply my opinion and obviously you can also leave other considerations in case you have them for example saying look you also missed this point or I don't agree with this you can do everything well you can Leave anything you consider in the comments and you can also help anyone else who has this concern, what format you would prefer and you can also give your personal experience there.
- Andrés Cruz
Develop with Laravel, Django, Flask, CodeIgniter, HTML5, CSS3, MySQL, JavaScript, Vue, Android, iOS, Flutter