Do you want to use NLP in a project, or to dig into the state of the art? The NLTK approach may be dated, but it is easier to approach as an engineer, especial

Do you want to use NLP in a project, or to dig into the state of the art? The NLTK approach may be dated, but it is easier to approach as an engineer, especially if this is a hobby. It will give you a good introduction to problems in the space. The math heavy approaches may give better results long-term, but it will be a much longer time commitment, but this is probably more appropriate if you're trying to find a job. You can also do interesting things with a small dataset and the free plans of APIs like Watson. E.g., I'm working on a search engine for standalone lectures - https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com.