Agreed. As for reference materials, you missed the key point that they tend to go out of date. An outdated reference book is largely useless, in contrast to a good novel.
> What they don't tell you right away is that there's no end to the stuff
Is there an end to any field worth studying? I would argue the allure of studying such fields lies in the endless horizons. The possibilities of expanding human knowledge by pushing beyond what is known.
It's been my experience that they do prepare chicken ahead of time. I've always seen trays of cooked chicken sitting under heat lamps. Also, I'm not sure about your last point. I eat at Popeyes about once a month and have never felt that their service was any different from any other fast food establishment.
I don't believe true crypto HFT strategies exist (i.e. sub-millisecond tick to trade). It's just not possible with websockets and http requests being the standard for data feeds and order placement on crypto exchanges.
> Making markets does not add any value to anyone other than the marketmakers and the stock exchanges.
Could you elaborate on this statement? It is my understanding that the value market markers provide is liquidity and tighter spreads. Worst case, they pull orders when informed volume is detected, but then the book is no worse off than what it would be if the market makers weren't there.
I would advise against Google's python course, as it is geared toward python devs working at Google. The course teaches Python 2, and goes against widely accepted guidelines such as PEP-8.
I highly recommend David Beazley's Python Cookbook (https://www.dabeaz.com/cookbook.html) for the most idiomatic and comprehensive introduction to Python.