First, I would say you need to understand your own learning style and what methods work for you. For me, practical beats theoretical any day. Everything I've b

First, I would say you need to understand your own learning style and what methods work for you. For me, practical beats theoretical any day. Everything I've become good at, I almost always had tried learning it from reading books or tutorials online, would get bored and give up. It wasn't until I needed to use the tool to get some greater purpose, then I could use the draw of having that tool solve one of my needs, and had a reason to not get lost in the details until I needed them. So read up on the general types of problems they're commonly used for, and get an understanding of what they might be able to do, and if something sounds like it could help towards solving a problem, go after it. Also, people like to shame you when you're learning, as if using "training wheels" will keep you an intellectual cripple. I love training wheels. They get me productive enough to keep me interested, and I can always dig in deeper when I want to/have time, etc. But don't be afraid of just getting the job done. Then go back, learn from your mistakes, and iterate. Meanwhile, you're building real experience, familiarity with solving real problems, and learning the internals of the tools you're using, while the people arguing over the right editor to use, the right framework, the right generator, toolkit, bridge, etc, are all still posting on medium about how some new programming language/paradigm will solve all of our woes. At the end of the day, whatever helps you understand it better, go for it, no matter all of the "should"s and "shouldn't"s people will try to burden you with.