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Sites like Safari Books Online and Pluralsight have transformed the way I learn new technologies and techniques. That being said, I find myself getting 3x or 4

Sites like Safari Books Online and Pluralsight have transformed the way I learn new technologies and techniques. That being said, I find myself getting 3x or 4x the value out of Safari Books Online. Something about those Pluralsight videos makes it harder for me to extract piecemeal knowledge, versus finding the relevant content in a book. Still for $29/month it's an unbelievable value. My only other issue is I feel their beta site makes it harder to find courses and is a step backward. Hopefully they'll remedy that.

rational-future 12y ago
Hmmm that's interesting. Almost any study I've seen implies that the most efficient way of learning is see-do. I think what makes Pluralsight and similar training videos work for me is having multiple big monitors (3x 27'') with the training video, IDE and browser easily visible at any time.
- joshpadnick 12y ago
  I hear you on that. I guess Pluralsight is like a "course on demand" and requires an hour or more of sit-down time, whereas Safari is really "ad hoc learning".
  - andrewsavikas 12y ago
    As Tim said, Safari is actually both (2000+ on-demand video courses plus all the books and a bunch of conference videos). And in our usage data, we see most people do both things -- short "ad hoc" learning, especially during the work day, with longer sessions of activity, both in video and books, in the evenings. The trend is especially pronounced with mobile devices, as mobile usage peaks on the weekend and includes a much longer average session length than we see on the desktop.
marpstar 12y ago
Same here. While it seems like all of my colleagues prefer videos, I can't stand how slow videos go. Maybe it's because I read faster than most people I know, but I'll take a solid book over videos any day.
Tim_OReilly 12y ago
Fortunately, with Safari, you don't need to choose between books and video training. We have both, and more interesting things to come.

rational-future 12y ago

Hmmm that's interesting. Almost any study I've seen implies that the most efficient way of learning is see-do. I think what makes Pluralsight and similar training videos work for me is having multiple big monitors (3x 27'') with the training video, IDE and browser easily visible at any time.

joshpadnick 12y ago
I hear you on that. I guess Pluralsight is like a "course on demand" and requires an hour or more of sit-down time, whereas Safari is really "ad hoc learning".
- andrewsavikas 12y ago
  As Tim said, Safari is actually both (2000+ on-demand video courses plus all the books and a bunch of conference videos). And in our usage data, we see most people do both things -- short "ad hoc" learning, especially during the work day, with longer sessions of activity, both in video and books, in the evenings. The trend is especially pronounced with mobile devices, as mobile usage peaks on the weekend and includes a much longer average session length than we see on the desktop.

marpstar 12y ago

Same here. While it seems like all of my colleagues prefer videos, I can't stand how slow videos go. Maybe it's because I read faster than most people I know, but I'll take a solid book over videos any day.

Tim_OReilly 12y ago

Fortunately, with Safari, you don't need to choose between books and video training. We have both, and more interesting things to come.