Books aren't just a lower quality version of dialog with a person though. They operate entirely differently. With very few people can you think quietly for 30 minutes straight without talking, but with a book you can put it down and come back to it at will.

I don't think professional programmers were using notepad in 1985. Here's talk of IDEs from an article from 1985: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800225.806843 It mentions Xerox Development Environment, from 1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Development_Environment

The feedback loop for programming / mathematics / other things I've studied was not a week in the year 2019. In that ancient time the feedback look was maybe 10% slower than with any of these LLMs since you had to look at Google search.

The point is that time and struggle are required for understanding. The advisor isn’t telling the student to go read these books because he doesn’t have time to explain.

He’s saying go read these books, wrestle with the ideas, go to bed, dream about them, think about them in the shower. Repeat that until you understand enough to understand the answer.

There’s no shortcut here. If you had unlimited time with the advisor he couldn’t just sit you down and make you understand in a few sessions.