I have read all of them and I have watched almost all of the training videos mentioned and that, is the list I would give anybody who I would want to discourage from joining the field. The textbooks I mean COME ON. They are comprehensive and neatly academic but not pragmatic at all. There are playlists in youtube that would cut through all the unnecessary content and will get you building RAG systems in a couple of hours. Kudos to the Langchain team for all the content online.
The fastest way to learn is always to go after a difficult problem you find fascinating. Learning by the books is the second fastest, and is suitable for those without the experience to have a fascinating problem to motivate them. This applies to many but not all, for example a university student might have a vague interest in AI but not know where to start. If you’re already in the field though, it’s best to just keep hacking forwards, even if you can’t prove every theorem from the major textbooks.
