Sure, I've been doing a lot of full-stack web development lately, and I found that reading chapters from the textbook "Computer Networks" by Andrew Tenenbaum as a primary source to be far more enlightening about how networks operate, than reading any of the hottest frameworks documentation on how they work under-the-hood. Corporate documentation tends to be more about giving off the vibe of competence, as opposed to being actually informative. They want to make it look like their tool/framework is easy to learn by offering false senses of understanding, instead of the deep understanding provided by textbooks. There are exceptions, but they seem to be growing more and more rare. Compare man pages for old CLI tools versus documentation for frameworks like Next.JS, which tends to gloss over important implementation details that might make you a better overall developer (instead of a framework wrangler).
On the side, I'm trying to enhance my knowledge on embedded systems as well, and picked up the book "Making Embedded System" by Elecia White. I have learned so much in just the first few chapters, even though I worked on an embedded software project for a full year recently. This has served me well, because previously my understanding of embedded systems was more of at the level of an Arduino, rather than an embedded developer. Arduino is fantastic for getting your feet wet, but it does hide away a lot of slightly complicated details (that are not actually that hard to learn with a little effort).
I would basically say, always prefer lengthy and somewhat dry textbooks over superficial and meme-heavy blog posts (or worse, YouTube videos). Learn the subject as if you only have one shot in your career to learn it, and have to learn a permanent representation of the subject that can last decades. Entertaining corporate docs, blog posts and videos are like a sugar-heavy diet for the mind, you'll feel energized at first, but eventually become sick from lack of deep understanding of anything
In a twist of irony, here is a blog post that explains this idea reasonably well - https://archive.ph/XSPRr
The better "Framework wranglers" usually eventually learn the "leaks" as part of the abstraction's API, and learn to be comfortable not trusting anything.
TCP can fail, but so can my own totally deterministic code I only think I understand. Or more likely, I trip and fall and break the Ethernet cable and the whole thing fails.
My job is to make the final result reliable anyway, even knowing the thoughts in my own head are not trustworthy. Even if I knew anything about proof theory I could still make a mistake with a mathematical proof, and simplicity can't stop it. Left and right are fairly simple concepts and I've mixed them up so many times.
A lot of devs think in terms of trust and quality, and are so quick to assume entire subsystems are perfectly fine, whether it's because it's a high quality thing from a trusted vendor, or because it's simple and they did it themselves and feel they understand it.
It's just like in real life, how people seem totally sure they won't trip and fall or drop what they're holding. I'm used to understanding my own hands as unpredictable, so I guess that's why I like tech.
It's less about avoiding mistakes and more about predicting and planning for mistakes.
On the side, I'm trying to enhance my knowledge on embedded systems as well, and picked up the book "Making Embedded System" by Elecia White. I have learned so much in just the first few chapters, even though I worked on an embedded software project for a full year recently. This has served me well, because previously my understanding of embedded systems was more of at the level of an Arduino, rather than an embedded developer. Arduino is fantastic for getting your feet wet, but it does hide away a lot of slightly complicated details (that are not actually that hard to learn with a little effort).
I would basically say, always prefer lengthy and somewhat dry textbooks over superficial and meme-heavy blog posts (or worse, YouTube videos). Learn the subject as if you only have one shot in your career to learn it, and have to learn a permanent representation of the subject that can last decades. Entertaining corporate docs, blog posts and videos are like a sugar-heavy diet for the mind, you'll feel energized at first, but eventually become sick from lack of deep understanding of anything
In a twist of irony, here is a blog post that explains this idea reasonably well - https://archive.ph/XSPRr
Here's a canonical blog post (again, the irony) on why understanding subjects deeply is important - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...