I guess your question is why read a book when you can just learn as you go and as you need to. I didn't read a book, but I probably should have because it took a long time for me to pick up things that would have helped a ton earlier on. For example, I recently learned that you can turn off "greedy" when using .* by adding a ? after it. This was a huge revelation that I would have benefited from day one, ten years prior.