I've learnt from various sources, but none of them were papers. There is no one-size-fits-all teaching or learning method. And rudeness and insults are going to make people less likely to learn, not more.

Is that not because, at the time, you were much more of a beginner than you are now?

I've been studying Computer Science for the last four years (BSc and now MSc) but was coding for maybe three years before that.

Back then I was learning JavaScript and PHP from w3schools, PHP.net and some blogs. I built a framework from reading the source code for CodeIgniter. I learn't a lot about object orientated design, or the lack thereof, in that project.

By the time I finished 2nd year of Comp Sci I had a pretty good understanding of algorithms, design patterns, some theory (Petri-nets, state machines, etc..), databases, etc. Going into my MSc, there is quite a lot that you can't learn without reading papers. For example, chances are you are going to have no idea how to solve the consensus problem in a distributed system without reading Paxos.

I tried to read the Paxos paper and gave up. The Raft paper I probably could've understood, but I found it easier to understand by looking at an implementation and a less formal description of it. I don't think it's about what you know (plenty of papers have few prerequisites and are conceptually quite simple).

I've been writing software for 20/years, and had I learned the concepts brought forth in these papers years ago, I would have been much better. Hacking is not writing software.