> I doubt any mathematician ever learned their subject by mainly reading proofs. And I say that as someone who secretly enjoys reading and working through proo

> I doubt any mathematician ever learned their subject by mainly reading proofs. And I say that as someone who secretly enjoys reading and working through proofs of theorems. Understanding mathematics demands developing strong intuition of ideas before attempting their logical justification. This is half right: you don't learn math by reading proofs, you learn it by writing proofs. Developing strong intuition without proofs is possible (albeit difficult) for applied topics, but not viable at all for pure math.