It is really common that you read only a glimpse of the entire text and trick yourself to have understood it, only realizing that mistake later. In some sense the text gives you too much information that your brain can cause frame drop, that's something you should be aware when you read the text (you for example need to rephrase the understood text yourself). By comparison a well-paced video can give the exact amount of information you have to tinker before moving on. I do agree that a well-paced video is much rarer than a well-written text in the whole internet.
It wasn’t until I started learning networking concepts from a third-level/college text book that I picked up in a second-hand shop that I realised how much my brain fools me into thinking I’m absorbing information encoded in words and diagrams. The end of each chapter had questions based on the material covered in that chapter and it was only while attempting to answer them that I realised how much I had thought I’d absorbed – but hadn’t.
When buying technical books, I now try to get ones that have questions or exercises at the end of each chapter. If not, I take notes while reading by attempting to summarise each section in my own words. Answering technical questions for other people is also a great way of consolidating knowledge and filling the gaps in my own understanding.
> trick yourself to have understood it, only realizing that mistake later.
Exactly. My point is that technical text is never read linearly (like a video). Reading is an active process, where you scan the whole page repeatedly for all the displayed formulas, then for apparitions on these formulas inside the text, then peek at the figure, then read some words in a paragraph while looking from time to time at the figure in case it is referenced by the text. After a few minutes you have grasped everything. At least this is how I read. Looking at a video is so passive and linear that you get bored after a few seconds.
