I find that it is complementary. If I spend a lot of time reading about a subject, I can build up a great base of knowledge, but if I then later do projects involving that subject, I tend to find out that a lot of my priorities were upside down, and tend to see a lot of limitations and conditions that are hard to pick up from reading.
On the other hand, if I spend a lot of time practicing without any theory to guide me, then I find that I make some progress, but often when I later learn theory, I see huge blind spots and mistakes in my work, as well as huge shortcuts and lots of tricks that I should’ve applied.
I would also bet it depends heavily on how you measure it. Pure book learning probably boosts pure book scores more, while pure practice learning probably boosts practical task performance more (at first at least, until you’ve calibrated the book knowledge to the real world).
I find that it is complementary. If I spend a lot of time reading about a subject, I can build up a great base of knowledge, but if I then later do projects involving that subject, I tend to find out that a lot of my priorities were upside down, and tend to see a lot of limitations and conditions that are hard to pick up from reading.
On the other hand, if I spend a lot of time practicing without any theory to guide me, then I find that I make some progress, but often when I later learn theory, I see huge blind spots and mistakes in my work, as well as huge shortcuts and lots of tricks that I should’ve applied.
I would also bet it depends heavily on how you measure it. Pure book learning probably boosts pure book scores more, while pure practice learning probably boosts practical task performance more (at first at least, until you’ve calibrated the book knowledge to the real world).