I read a lot of discussion here that focuses on learning as some kind of basic skill acquisition. How to I learn Rust? How to I learn to speak conversational Ja

I read a lot of discussion here that focuses on learning as some kind of basic skill acquisition. How to I learn Rust? How to I learn to speak conversational Japanese? Other topics require judgement, the weighing of alternatives. Sometimes there is no clear winner. When you just need to know a fact, searching online or asking GPT is a good way to go. I haven't had good luck learning higher level concepts this way. One example: how would you discover an idea like "don't repeat yourself" if you didn't know it? There's a school of thought that says you'll learn it when you need it, but I'm not so sure - I think you can make faster progress if someone guides you through several complex improvements at once. Another example: say you're writing a networked game and you are communicating some basic information but you are also communicating inforation that is derived from the basic information (and hence is unnecessary to send). How do you learn this is inelegant, "repeating yourself", a waste of bandwidth? A critique from a mentor would clue you in right away.