Depends. But 90% of the time – yes.

I noticed that when I recently started learning Swift, even though I often use books, and live or offline (self-paced) video trainings.

I think it depends on what you’re after

If you just want to learn about all the different methods/functions and get a gist or an overview of the lang or framework, then docs are awesome. However books help you put everything together, and rather than just teach you what that tech is all about, they often focus or go on to show you how you could use it.

I think @russolsen’s Design Patterns in Ruby is an awesome example here, you’re unlikely to see any of what it contains in the docs, yet all the information and knowledge in the book is priceless

Here’s what I wrote about it in my Best Way To Learn Ruby & Rails post:

Don’t be fooled by the age of this book – it’s still very relevant today, and absolutely without doubt, one of my all time favourites!

It’s all well and good knowing the fundamentals of a language (which you just learned from The Well Grounded Rubyist) but like any tool, it’s what you do with it that counts – and that’s where this book excels. It shows you how you might use Ruby in different situations.

Russ Olsen is clearly an eloquent writer, with a wealth of knowledge that he happily imparts in this easy to digest, amicably toned book. Another essential purchase. You can get it from here.