Oh the future of education… I can speak on this for days…
First, I don’t think books are going to be obsolete, but they have to evolve. They can’t be reference. You’re not paying for the references you can get online - you’re paying for the author’s experience.
But I don’t think it stops there. I’ve spent several years studying and applying educational techniques, and the one thing I know to be true is that learning happens through practice and feedback, not from reading or watching a video. The future is interactive feedback. Some places are doing this now, but the problem is that you often see the presented materials (videos and reading) are not aligned with the exercises and practice. They’re either abstract puzzles, or they are missing crucial clues.
Good educational material is strongly aligned. When you look at the Hugo book, for example, you should be able to accomplish each of the advanced exercises by leveraging what you learned in the chapter. That’s because they’re not afterthoughts; I wrote them first, and used them as a checklist. “Did I give people enough info to be successful with these challenges? Nope? Better add more stuff to the chapter or remove the challenge.”
So the future of learning is, I hope, going to be more aligned and incorporate more feedback and more practice. Watching videos and reading books isn’t gonna cut it. In fact, if I could add that interactivity to my books, that’d be amazing. We’ll have to see…
As for the most exciting thing right now? That’s Phoenix LiveView for sure. I love Elixir, I love Phoenix, and I love the idea of creating high performing real-time apps without writing JavaScript. I like reducing the complexity and learning curves. I also know that we, as an industry, have tried similar “you don’t have to know JS” solutions before and they’ve been… not great. But LiveView looks stellar and I am itching to clear my plate so I can play.