My experience is different than most people apparently: Books put you on the fast lane IMO. Of course it takes practice to master something, anything. Books rep

My experience is different than most people apparently: Books put you on the fast lane IMO. Of course it takes practice to master something, anything. Books represent a form of compressed, structured knowledge that is very difficult for someone to find on his own. It is really nice to play around with mentos and coca-cola but without reading something like the McMurry (Chemistry 8th/7th/6th or 9th Edition) you'll never understand organic chemistry's basics. You might get a long way on your own if you're Ramanujan-level, but otherwise I think you'll learn, but way more slowly and in a possibly unstructured way.