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The more you engage with the content the more benefits you will get, the knowledge will stay longer.

By engaging I mean doing exercises, implementing algorithms in code, writing pet projects.

This will ensure you understand a topic, not have an impression that you understand. In past, I made a mistake to rush read textbooks till the point I feel I understood the content and ignoring most of the exercises - the exam showed me that I was wrong :)

At the same time, I would not suggest to apply engage mode for every book and chapter - your progress will be slow, and you may lose motivation deep in the middle of some thick textbook, as you may not be able to relate very detailed information there to your current expertise.

Personally, I apply the combination of skimming and engagement.



This advice is so much more important than which course or book you choose.

Don't sweat the choice too much, choose one of the canonical books, and commit to mastering the material by doing, not by (solely) reading.




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