Programming or any technical learning is a hands on experience. Take notes and apply techniques, using pen-and-paper or the keyboard, as they are presented.

If you really have to just "read" a technical book, IME a less-is-more approach works best. 5-10 minutes at a time, not even a chapter at once. Maybe a few paragraphs if its something really information dense. Funny aside, I find my morning "business" is the perfect time to this sort of reading using the Kindle app on my phone.

In this stage, I don't sweat the parts I don't get, I just note for later, that, if these turn out to be important, will require some care, patience and time. I also build some sort of "map" in my mind about the elements that exist, to get an overview.

After doing so, I feel a lot more confident to tackle the topic of the book "properly", doing exercises, etc.

Also, realistically you probably won't remember most of what you read. I suck at that as well, but you do build up a lot of peripheral knowledge. You may not remember how to do that one thing, but maybe you do remember that it exists, or that it was in a particular book. Just that type of knowledge has worked well for me.

2. If feasible for you, consider getting a neuropsychological evaluation to rule out any learning disabilities like adult attention deficit disorder.

1) I buy physical textbooks and absolutely destroy them with notes in the margins, highlighting, etc. It helps me to interact with the material instead of letting it wash over me, which means I'm both thinking about it more in-depth and as side effect I'm less bored. Otherwise I'll fall asleep and won't learn anything. 2) I accept that I'm not going to remember the entire book. A lot of books are most useful as references anyway. But if you ever find yourself going, "Oh that's really handy to know," then you can make a special note of it or even put it into flashcards. I've been using Anki. The trick is to recognize what is actually worth doing this for. 3) If something is especially worth knowing, (see point 2), see if you can either do problems from the book or try out the concept in some way if there are no problems available.

If you're reading something just because you feel like you should, you won't get anything out of it (or a least I don't).

Unlike others here, I never take notes, and rarely do suggested exercises. But I read and think through examples; and as to exercises, I do think of "how I would approach it" and "what is that the author wants me to learn from this exercise".

Here's an example of how to use it to learn quantum mechanics, but you can imagine how it would translate to technical books for software developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFuu4pesKf0

Start from chapter 1, study the concepts and play with the code examples a few times till you understand. Usually there are exercises at the end of each chapter. Try to work on those.

The first step is figuring out what your learning style is.

It’s easy to fully internalize generalizations that someone has presented to you, usually because it’s wrapped up in a way that is mostly compatible with how you see the world. Because someone has done the work of distilling this information, you are not able to share in most of the intellectual benefit. It’s the process of having a question, discovering an answer, internalization of the concept, and synthesizing a summary that brings you closer to understanding. It feels like a series of “lightbulb moments” when we consume this content, but it is often shallow and fleeting because the genesis of the idea was not your own. Airport/self-help books are a good example of this mental candy that makes us feel good when reading it but, unless you are able to fully internalize it, are just empty mental calories.

Comprehension and understanding are derived from amassing knowledge a little bit at a time as your mind is ready to advance your understanding. In other words, you really have to be “primed” for knowledge found in books. This is the reason that information you obtain after an adequately-informed struggle stays so salient: your mental model had all the scaffolding around a concept but there was a clear “void” where this answer fits, and if you find that fits super cleanly, it’s extra satisfying.

When consuming information-dense material, you end up with this knowledge back-pressure where it’s floating around your short term memory but won’t be committed to long term memory because there is just no place for it yet. When recalling information in order to create new content with it, and assuming you are challenging yourself, you will end up in situations where there is information starvation (the opposite of back-pressure) where you must either find answers (to fit in your mental model) or find a workaround (ignore the gap).

Some people can just read books and create efficient mental models. Others (myself included) have a limit of how much they can learn in one sitting because our brains need to be fully ready to accept this information.

The last piece of this is the dopamine response cycle that is a positive feedback system (positive as in “more creates more”). Dopamine makes us feel good by rewarding behavior that evolution deemed necessary for species survival (over simplification). Dopamine indirectly triggers long term memory retention because we need to remember why we felt good in that moment so we can replicate it. This used to be, “this berry tastes good, I should remember where this bush was and what the berry looked like.” In the modern context, it ultimately delivers motivation to us because we have adapted to using it to learn new information that is less relevant to survival. Achieving goals and solving problems at hand causes a huge amount of dopamine release. The problem is that we’ve found ways to hijack these systems and short-circuit this feedback cycle so everything had to become way more stimulating.

This got long, but my advice is to work on a project of your choosing that you are intrinsically motivated to do. Begin work on that project and read some of the book that relates to the problem at hand. Repeat this cycle of reading and working, trying to incorporate patterns and concepts you find while reading into your project. Make little goals for yourself every day before your start, and really hold yourself accountable in finishing them.

read a page, keep a notebook next to you and rewrite each paragraph in your own words. it forces you to engage more deeply with the material