Ask HN: Which medium works best for self-study?

2 points by jeromecornet 5 years ago | 1 comment

I realized that I retain way more information when I look at written words, rather than looking at graphics or watching videos, but conventional wisdom says that a picture is worth 1000 words so I'm probably not in the majority.

I wrote a book about French wine (I wrote the book that I wished existed when I started studying the topic) because of this preference, but I'm wondering whether I should publish this content as a mobile app with more graphics and more interactions rather than in wordy, book form.

How do you prefer to learn about a subject ? Long form text, graphics, videos, small daily snippets of information ?

markus_zhang 5 years ago |

I think it depends.

From my experience, if I want to learn something a bit more general, let's say computer science, that is not specifically bundled with a piece of software, a book is the best medium. Videos are great, but have a few important cons: 1) It's difficult to see code on screen; 2) It's too slow and difficult to index

And a real book is always better than an e-book because: 1) It's easier to index; 2) a bit better for my eyes.

However, whence the learning target focuses on a specific software, let's say Unity, videos immediately shine over the other mediums as it's much easier to learn the interface with videos.