It had never occurred to me to wait for a class to teach me something. Just go out and learn it! If there are no references (books, wiki, blog, training resourc

It had never occurred to me to wait for a class to teach me something. Just go out and learn it! If there are no references (books, wiki, blog, training resources) it's great fun to go your own way and figure it out from scratch. Usually there are some shoulders to stand on and reading a quick paper is fine well spent, but in every niche area it's best not to spend too long searching for that paper. Just do. Learn along the way. I suppose in less niche areas it might be better to spend more time finding good tutorials, but even then, we learn much more when we do, not when we listen.