No, blog posts and online documentation are hardly limited in such a fashion. They cover everything from corner cases to syntax introductions, to setting up the environment. Go, as a single example in a sea of examples, has their entire official getting started and other guides entirely online:
And while SO has recently limited itself to corner cases, it has not always been that way. It has been a resource providing information on culture, machine setups, and "where's the best info on getting started online" for a very long time.
> No, blog posts and online documentation are hardly limited in such a fashion.
I purposefully didn't mention online documentation because it's too easy to make the case that man pages are more often than not too obscure as starting material.
Blog posts don't cover everything. Online doc. does though (that's like... the point).
The way you are trying to build the argument that it's either paper books or online/e-books/blog/SO and there are mutually exclusive won't lead the conversation anywhere (note the usage of the word 'typically').
I am not getting into a cherry-picking argument contest with you. You prefer e-books and online doc and dislike paper books ? Fine by me.