Most members of the analytic number theory book club were computer programmers in one form or another. A few among them had very strong background in mathemati

Most members of the analytic number theory book club were computer programmers in one form or another. A few among them had very strong background in mathematics, especially in elementary number theory and complex analysis. But nobody had any prior knowledge of analytic number theory. The pace was not an issue for me because we used to go really slow. We read every line of the book together, ensuring we understood each argument before moving to the next one. As the meeting host, I came prepared for the meetings and spent a lot of time illustrating proofs with additional details, perspectives, and examples (see https://offbeat.cc/iant/boards/ https://offbeat.cc/iant/boards/ for notes). This approach suited me well, as I need time to digest new mathematical concepts and form intuition around them. I hope it worked for others, but we didn't survey participants, so I can't say for sure. Sometimes we picked some exercise problems, solved them, and walked through the solutions during the meetings. But most exercises were done offline by the participants in their own time. I have written a lot more about the learning experience here: https://susam.net/one-hundred-meetings.html https://susam.net/one-hundred-meetings.html