Why books teach me more than articles
For about eight years I've read 10 to 15 articles a day. It keeps me up to date, but most days I finish and can't tell you what I actually learned.
School was different. I'd spend hours with books on computers and technology, some of them years out of date, and come away feeling like I'd understood something. (This isn't about paper versus screens. It's about the format.)
So I tried something. A few pages of a book in the morning and a few more at night. No strict target, but it works out to about two non-fiction books a month. It's been the better habit by a long way, and I've been trying to work out why.
I skim articles
Online, I'm usually hunting for one answer. I skim, find it, and leave. After years of that, an article puts me in skimming mode before I've read the first line. A book doesn't. It's long and it asks for my attention, so I give it.
Books stay put
Articles get updated, moved, or buried under newer ones. A book I read three years ago is still on the shelf, and I can open it to the same page.
More work goes into them
You can write and publish an article in an afternoon. I'm doing it right now. A book goes through planning, drafts, and editing before anyone reads it, and the author knows it'll be around for a while. Plenty of articles are written to rank on Google first and to be useful second.
Books also stay on one subject for a couple of hundred pages. The ideas build on each other, and that's a big part of why I remember them.
So what about articles?
Yes, this is an article. I still think they're worth writing, as long as they're written for a reader and not for search. When I write one, I want it to say something I haven't seen elsewhere, or at least say it more clearly. And I want to point to the real source. In programming that's usually the official docs, even when they're harder to read than the tutorial that paraphrases them.
Articles are good for answers. Books are where I actually learn.