This is a old argument for the modern practice of blogging. I've often been confused as to the relative merits of reading versus writing. In reading, you gain a lot of information quickly. In writing, you develop your own thinking. Schopenhauer makes it clear that not only is writing vastly superior, but that reading is potentially bad for you, because it encourages replacing active (strenuous) thought with lazy listening.<p>Paul Graham's advice to "run uphill" is a generalization of this: the better activities require more effort.
He also wrote this essay:<p>On Reading and Books -
<a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter5.html" rel="nofollow">http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/c...</a><p>in which he talks about "[those that] have read themselves stupid."<p>It's interesting that we can trace a parallel with technology: reading too much but building too little.
Schopenhauer also wrote some cracking stuff on women: <a href="http://www.heretical.com/miscella/onwomen.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.heretical.com/miscella/onwomen.html</a>
What a load of very repetetive smug unjustified claims.<p>"""That is why all those who think for themselves come, at bottom, to much the same conclusion"""<p>!<p>(Edit: It does change after a while. Press on past the chain of: People who think are superior to people who read. People who think are superior to people who read. People who think (e.g. me) are superior to people who read. People who think (e.g. me) are superior to most people. I am superior to most people. I am superior to most people).
If you enjoy this, Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual is another great essay by "the passionate and lucid Schopenhauer" : <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aXFsb2UogOkC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=on+the+apparent+deliberateness+in+the+fate+of+the+individual&source=bl&ots=vFj0uJY9Pd&sig=qFaoNtwN7KV3i9TA9JePIZvGgYQ&hl=en&ei=P9GhSpGYGdud8QakpuC7Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=true" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=aXFsb2UogOkC&pg=PA199&#...</a>
I find that some good books take a very long time for me to read because I need to stop and mull over what I am reading. Case in point: I just finished a short Joseph Campbell book ("Pathways to Bliss"): I would literally stop every paragraph or two and reflect on how the material was relevant to my own life, about my own 'myth,' etc. It took me a month to work through this short book.
Transposed to programming I'll take this as saying "Don't use other people's libraries, write your own, because you will understand them properly and they will integrate better with your programs."
<i>Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one’s own. It means putting the mind into leading-strings.</i><p>Newton couldn't have invented classical mechanics without the ancient Greeks. In order to think, you need something to think about; you need input. Some of that input will be from watching apples fall off of trees. Some of it will be from information gathered from other people, presented in books.<p>What rubbish.