michael_nielsen

Also, I guess it depends on whether you consider something like this a book or a web page :) http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com  It hits most of my sweet spots for how I prefer to learn new stuff.

What kinds of content are you learning from online tutorials or videos though? Does it include the kind of information from other disciplines that is required to do linguistically informed #nlproc, not to mention to engage with ethical issues?

That's where I find books superior, since (good) books provide a larger context to specific problem areas. When I search for information, I typically am interested in knowing how to solve a very specific issue, e.g. I need to relearn how backpropagation works for the nth time.

That rarely includes a larger interdisciplinary context, and whenever it does it feels rather shallow or sometimes even wrong. That's why I in parallell try to keep up with the current discourse happening within the community on Twitter or in conferences.

(Not saying this is the best way, it's just how my life currently works.)

And in such a context, would you make time to read a book?

If I knew I were to start working on a larger project for a longer time frame, definitely! Unfortunately, all I projects I currently work on are fairly short-term, which makes it difficult to prioritize reading books over "Getting Things Done".

Just coming across this conversation (as the author of http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com ). @emilymbender's original question is of great interest to me. I've published two books the conventional way, as well as that book-length "web page".