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I'm CS major trying to learn QFT on my own . I'm trying to make an efficient study plan .The problem is that I've never read any textbook from cover to cover and solved all the problems .What of the following is the most productive approach:

A-To start reading textbooks from cover to cover like reading most of an electrodynamics book and solving all the problems before tackling QFT

B-To just start reading QM and if I encounter something that requires Magnetostatics for example I go to an electrodynamics book to understand it even though I've never dealt with Magnetostatics before? And after I learn harmonic oscillators ,I open a book on QFT and read the chapter on classical klein-gordon field ? and then possibly, open a book on solid state to understand vibrations in a solid etc. and If I don't know complex analysis ,I wait until I encounter a problem that require complex analysis (Like the propagators) to learn it?

Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
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learner
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  • Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft has some wise things to say about this: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html – Johannes Dec 15 '12 at 16:25
  • Yes, but not all of it (I've not studied scattering and perturbation theory and tend to skip a lot of things for example – learner Dec 15 '12 at 16:27
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    Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/5508/2451 – Qmechanic Dec 15 '12 at 16:30
  • I believe Isaac Newton said somewhere that he basically followed Plan B (for mathematics, at least, I don't know if he did it for physics). He would literally just read books and go through problems, if he didn't know what they were talking about, he would go and find the relevant book, work through that one, and return to the book he was reading. – Tom Sep 08 '18 at 11:48

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