Not much of a process, more like: 1. Learn about thing 2. Read about thing 3. Play with thing 4. Create something else using thing 5. Steps 2-4 in any orde

Not much of a process, more like: 1. Learn about thing 2. Read about thing 3. Play with thing 4. Create something else using thing 5. Steps 2-4 in any order, any amount of times. The hardest thing for me is to apply my knowledge. Sure I can read all I want about a database tech, but if I don't have any data to put in it, it's hard to feel like that is real knowledge, or to even keep that knowledge around.