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Advantages to Delerak's technique:
-> You start being able to do basic things a lot faster.
-> You learn real, applicable things.
-> You get used to real styles.
-> You get experienced with mud code, in particular, at the same time as you're learning about code in general.
-> You don't have to read as much long, long text, often obfsucated and dull.
-> Raw experience.
-> You learn hacks.
Disadvantages:
-> You learn hacks.
-> You often miss critical information about things... There are a LOT of details out there, no one in the world remembers them all.
-> You get next to no theory, something that is vital to creative generation (especially of algorithms).
-> You're heavily rooted to one codebase, one language.
-> You miss out on good programming style, software engineering techniques, etc...
-> You learn the original coders problems/deficiencies.
It's hard to say which is the better approach... Some people propose that everyone learns to code in a language like Scheme, which is clean, algorithmically purty, and hard to create hacks with, but is also fast, and completely unlike any popular language. Some people say everyone should learn C, C, and C. Some people recommend all book learning. Some people recommend reading code, hacking at it, and using other sources as support.
Your choice of book will be strongly influenced by choices like that...
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