Completely agree, and motivation is definitely a factor in how I've directed my own learning previously. Fortunately, my growing interest in this sort of stuff

Completely agree, and motivation is definitely a factor in how I've directed my own learning previously. Fortunately, my growing interest in this sort of stuff is related to my day job as a coder, and I would definitely be looking to jump in as early as possible with code to play around with new ideas learnt.