Ask HN: Hour of reading articles in HN vs. 1 hour of reading books?

I'd say go with HN. As a NodeJS developer, I found books to be lacking of the latest JS frameworks and modules. Books have been obsoleted since the internet was created 15 years ago.

Reading the best books on a topic is infinitely better than any time spent on this site. There is nothing to learn here anymore, it's just news.

For example you'll never hear the words "Concurrent hashmap" or "denormalization strategy" on this site, but you will in an interview.

Books. The older the better, so they've passed the great filter of time.

Pick books.

signal to noise ratio here has gotten worse; not as worth anymore.

Both. If you want to learn about a specific subject / gain a new skill, then books are the way to go. They tend to be more informationally dense and comprehensive as compared to blog posts. Books tend to be of a higher quality because of the economics involved. It's much harder to get a book published than to create a blog, so there's more curation of what gets published which is for your benefit; there's a higher standard for the content. Also, a lot of blogs are used as marketing channels, trying to sell you something. this can corrupt the information in the blog post because they're trying to sell you something other than the blog post. With the book, you're paying for the book so the incentives between you and the author are more aligned.

But, periodicals, blog posts and forums are good to keep apprised of new things going on in the industry and they can be used to get new ideas like you said and as jumping off points to read books. I often see something referenced online, want to learn more and then buy a book on the subject. I like to think of blog posts as more like op-eds than factual works.

HN is ok for passive discovery. But like others have said, it has a low SnR.

Textbooks and research papers are fantastic. It's important to actively read and even do problems when it's really vital locking down knowledge.

Depends on what your goals are of course. Entertainment, staying current etc. But here's a rough heuristic: if the book has survived for a while, say a few years, decades, or centuries, it's a good book. With limited time choose something of quality rather than sorting through the noise. Or take the opposite advice if you have different and just as valid goals.

If you're not sure what books to read, dig through HN or ask. I've learned a lot about productivity, procedural generation, and functional programming from sources linked on HN. Sometimes there are clever quotes from good books.

But you still have to read the book. If you have a book to read, read the book. If not, HN.

I cannot speak to your context well enough. If I only get to choose one, I choose HN (or even carefully curated Plebbit). While there are radical dark patterns in the attention economy with which to concern ourselves (and I'm happy to talk shit about the nature and states of discourse available to people), there are also many salient voices to hear within a recent and brief timeframe that aren't usually as easy to find elsewhere (at least not with as much signal-to-noise ratio).

I think ideally both. Wish I could motivate myself to read more.

But I think that it really depends on which book and which blog post etc.

And usually to really understand something in detail you can't just read the book. You have to do exercises to actually secure the knowledge or skill.

Reading books > Reading articles on HN

Although i admit, HN is addictive.

Well that Depends on the books and depends on the articles. What books are you looking at and what blogs?

May I know specifically about which topics you are asking about?

But every hour of reading comments is time wasted.

If you are asking the question, books.

Once you can read a book and find mistakes or contradictions, HN.