Interesting observations by the author about the current state of computer science. The key takeaway for me is the importance of typing in this whole exchange. It was never really about the source of the knowledge - I too was reading HOML from a pdf on sioyek, not a physical book I had to carry around at all times, because of how expensive the book was. It was always about how you applied that knowledge.
Knowledge, for working programmers, was always the residue of typing. Of doing.
Exactly! I will not remember what Geron told me if I didn’t type any of it myself. I could sure as hell get an abstract summary of the book from Claude or some shit, but the slowness of it is the entire point! You cannot fake your way through a 400 page book. You cannot simply skip a page or two to get “ahead”. Reading is a discipline of its own, and in programming it’s becoming more important than ever, at least to me - in the respect of getting rid of abstractions.
Anyways, nice article.