“Ok, you may have figured out that this whole "spellbook" thing is just an amusing way for me to start learning again. The main takeaway is this: by assembling my own book of "recipes" that actually make something, I'm much more likely to maintain some kind of focus on learning. In the past, what I've done is just read everything and picked out the main principles as they've revealed themselves. What I have forgotten is that transcribing the nuggets is just as useful. I think I probably forgot this because it's so easy to just let the actual implementation replace documentation: Photoshop files, HTML, javascript libraries, etc. I don't think this is a good foundation, because you can cut 'n paste your way very quickly into the structural equivalent to spaghetti code. Packaging the information into nuggets as I learn, which I used to do when I was younger, may be the way for me to approach the new technologies that are making my head hurt now. As an adult I had expected things to get easier, but really they are just as hard. Fortunately, I now remember how I worked through the challenge.” - × × ×