Conversations like this are always well intentioned and friction truly is super useful to learning. But the ‘…’ in these conversations seems to always be implicating that we should inject friction.
There’s no need. I have peers who aren’t interested in learning at all. Adding friction to their process doesn’t force them to learn. Meanwhile adding friction to the process of my buddies who are avidly researching just sucks.
If your junior isn’t learning it likely has more to do with them just not being interested (which, hey, I get it) than some flaw in your process.
Start asking prospective hires what their favorite books are. It’s the easiest way to find folks who care.
So in principle Gen AI could accelerate learning with deliberate use, but it's hard for the instructor to guide that, especially for less motivated students
Please read it as: "who knows what you'll find if you take a stop by the library and just browse!"
It’s not as if today’s juniors won’t have their own hairy situations to struggle through, and I bet those struggles will be where they learn too. The problem space will present struggles enough: where’s the virtue in imposing them artificially?
Books often have the "scam trap" where highly-regarded/praised books are often only useful if you are already familiar with the topic.
For example: i fell for the scam of buying "Advanced Programming in the unix environment" and a lot of concept are only shown but not explained. Wasted money, really. It's one of those book i regret not pirating before buying, really.
At the end of the day, watching some youtube video and then referencing the OS-specific manpage is worth much more than reading that book.
I suspect the case to be the same for other "highly-praised" books as well.