[nefitty]

Thank you for writing this. This is one of the most helpful comments I've read in my 7 years on HN.

A lot of this high-level engineering stuff feels so opaque. You outlined a clear heuristic: find a motivation to learn the tool, add artificial limits if necessary for your learning goals, then scout relevant resources to help you get unstuck. It seems simple when written out, but I always find myself trying to overload on uncontextualized information first, then feel confused about why I still don't know how to "make a neural net" or what have you.