... I had too many troubles with XNA... I've read several books but I'm still lost. It's like every book gave me 10 valuable "basic" lessons each before diggin' in advanced lessons, but I feel I need at least a thousand "basic lessons" to start understanding it well. ...
Perhaps you may have 'read' too many books. What you describe with respect to
the books and googling etc. is something I have seen a lot (esp. in academic
circles).
If people lack a certain knowledge, or want to solve a problem, many of them
tend to gather a lot of material (books, papers, google, etc.) skipping
through the information hoping to find answers quickly, since reading the
whole thing is considered a wast of time, because the world is thought moving
so fast. This strategy only works if one already has a profound understanding
of the core principles. Having this allows one to skip those "basic" levels
Hinomura talked about without any regret. But if not, the gaps will only
widen. There is no replacement for gaining a throughout understanding of the
art. But the success stories, the enticing pictures of others (the pictures of
ones very own mind) make people tend to progress at an unrealistic rate
trading in a possible understanding of the principles and as such widening the
gaps much further.
Reading many different books of the same new subject is a very inefficient
task, for the brain has only a finite capacity in processing information. Too
much information lead to disorder (experienced as confusion) for the brain
being unable to organize the input. Nothing will be learned that way. The
consumed information will fade away quickly and one is doomed to read it all
over again. A very good strategy to learn something is to keep the flow of
information at a minimum (something the internet isn't able to deliver giving
its whoring character) to keep the degree of disorder at a low and to let the
brain actually work/focus on the information given for the neurons to fire in
a coherent and organized fashion again and again up to the point when they
will start to build new pathways in ones brain turning the information into
knowledge. Being deeply focused on the subject, this process is believed to
take about "21 days" until something happens, i.e. until the neurons start to
build new pathways -- given you have the right lipids / fat acids in your
cells which many people suffer due to wrong feeding by consuming way too much
trans-unsaturated fatty acids making it much more difficult for them to learn
something. Anyhow.
Within this regard, it is better to just take one or two books and study at
least one of them till the end. This may seem daunting for many people at
first, but it's a necessity to gain said profound understanding of the
principles. Once gained, skipping books, chapters etc. becomes a pleasure
because it shows one how much one already knows about the subject. Yet I want
to add that one hasn't understood that much until (s)he can write it down with
his own words. And to free one from the choice of which book to choose, I can
say that any book will do which covers the intend subject to a good degree.
The book is not the point, the point is
you being focused on the subject. If I
should give an advice on books for learning a subject already established, I
would say; choose the old ones.