alt Hacker NewsI can confidently say that, yes, reading helps a lot. My mental model has shifted a bit that words are cheap (printing -> writing -> typing -> generating) and that we should accept there is something like high quality text.
I haven't really been a reader, but I can definitely notice when a book/text is "hard". I'm currently reading the old testament, and I understand very little (even the oxford one that has a lot of annotations is hard for me). I like this, because its a measurement of what I don't know (if that makes sense).
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I tried reading Proust's In Search Of Lost Time some time ago, in which the first 10-20 pages are about a guy lying in his bed at night and observing his own thoughts (roughly). And I quickly realised how I was reading the words and even sentences, but couldn't grasp the meaning of them - I couldn't produce a "mental model" or image of what it was about. It was a very humbling experience.
I used to be an avid reader as a child, even as a teenager. That was a long time ago. I'm looking forward to that time when I will have the mental capacity to read long prose again.
For the first time in quite a while, I've started reading a challenging, non-computer book ("The New Testament in its World").
I'm trying to decide if my attention span has atrophied, or if I'm just more aware now of my ADD.
Either way, I'm hopeful that my attention span for this kind of reading will grow with practice.