Why I Stopped Watching Coding Tutorials (And Read Textbooks Instead)

Main Ideas / Lessons

• Coding tutorials and short-form learning can be incomplete. Learning through YouTube videos, short courses (e.g., Udemy), and AI prompts may help you pick up isolated facts, but it often leaves you without the “whole picture.”
• Textbooks provide the missing context and structure. Reading helps you understand how and why concepts evolved—not just the definitions.
• Learning shouldn’t be “linear,” but you still need a coherent framework. Otherwise, you keep revisiting earlier material and feel lost (like jumping around episodes of a series).
• Textbooks aren’t meant for marathon-only study. The speaker explicitly warns against locking yourself in a room and reading for 12–15 straight hours.
• Best approach: combine reading + practical application.
  • Read in short, consistent sessions
  • Build or work on a project in parallel that uses what you read
• Networking knowledge repeatedly matters in real interviews and practice. Even if it wasn’t required in the speaker’s university curriculum, networking concepts show up across companies and projects.
• AI can help, but may not replace foundational understanding. The speaker used AI to learn TCP vs UDP, but later deeper questions revealed major knowledge gaps (including OSI model basics).

Methodology / Instruction-like Guidance

• Don’t rely only on videos / AI queries for deep mastery
  • Expect that you may collect “bits” of knowledge without a unified mental model.
• Use textbooks as a structured foundation
  • Treat them as a way to learn comprehensively and understand underlying reasons and protocol history.
• Adopt a sustainable study routine
  • Read a textbook:
    • for a few hours, or
    • at least 30 minutes per day, when possible.
• Practice immediately alongside reading
  • Create a project related to the concepts you studied.
  • Goal: achieve both understanding and practical application.
• Target your learning gaps
  • If you feel missing fundamentals in specific areas, look up commonly needed concepts and matching books.
• Use AI as supplementary, not as the core learning path
  • AI may quickly explain surface differences, but deeper conceptual questions still require structured study.

Examples / Narrative Points Included

• Interview story #1 (TCP vs UDP)
  • Asked the difference between TCP and UDP
  • Couldn’t answer initially → likely lost the opportunity
  • Learned the basics afterward using AI and a few videos
  • Later interview: could answer correctly, but failed when questions became deeper
  • Missing key fundamentals, including the OSI model’s seven layers
• Outcome of switching to textbooks
  • After reading a substantial portion, the speaker feels confident answering questions across application and transport layers.
  • Reading also feels mentally calming compared to fast, scrolling consumption.

Book References Mentioned

• Highly Loaded Applications: Programming, Scaling, Support
• Top-Down Approach (described as devoted to network technologies)

Source List (Speakers / Creators Mentioned)

• The speaker / narrator of the video (unnamed)
• Interviewers / company interview panels (not named)