But the thing about writing is actually writing. Not thinking or talking about writing. Then doing of it. So well done. Just keep swimming!

Charlie

The best way to learn Linux is to use it, rather than looking at it.

Developer Community

Conclusion

The best way to learn something is to actually put your hands on it.

Introduction

As someone with multiple identities, I’m often asked, how did you learn this how did you do that. I’m kind of tired of such questions and I really wanted to share some useful experience, thus the blog is written.

When reading the blog you may see how I learnt multiple things with different methods, but at the end of the day you will find that it all comes down to putting your hands on it.

How I learnt English

When I was extremely young, my father played a song called “Yesterday Once More” in his car, that was when I started being interested in, and wanted to learn English, even before kindergarten.

When I was finally in primary school, in the third grade, I had my first chance to learn English, it was all very easy for me, guess it’s because of my talent and interest. When someone likes painting, he naturally becomes devoted into it. The same theory works in any other field, also in language learning.

When I was in my fifth or sixth grade, when my mom was taking me to an institution to learn some other talents, we went by another institution that specializes in teaching English. We enrolled despite the high tuition fee (high for me based on my understanding of the world then).

The institution offered us (all the students) a software that puts a picture on top of words, and allowed us to tap on any of them to listen to the pronunciation and then read after it, there would also be a program rating the accuracy of my pronunciation. This is a boring and repetitive procedure but it builds connection between a word with actual objects or scenarios, which is beneficial to language learning.

They also offered classes and English Corners of both Chinese teacher and foreign teachers so we had quite lots of conversation opportunities with English speakers, which allowed us to actually use the language and learn by experience.

Just look back on how we learnt our native language, or mother tongue. For me as a Chinese it’s Mandarin. We were completely unable to talk neither to understand, but we had facial expressions, we had gestures, and we had crying. We literally learned our first language by being exposed to the environment and absorbing it. Then we are able to use a tiny bit of it, and use that bit to even learn quicker and more by asking all sorts of questions. In all things we have learnt, elements or components of the sentence, or grammar, are not involved.

Personally, I believe that when learning a language, it is best that we learn it by getting us exposed to that language, learnt it as is, instead of learning or using translations from another language. For grammar and properties of a word, etc., they are not as important. For me they are even completely neglected. I personally do not understand them, or even hate them, but I still have a rather decent English ability.

But that is an example of me learning another language that’s not in the same root as my native language. In my college I also learn Spanish, a language which rooted from Latin, same as English, making it extremely easy for me to learn. So basically it is compatible with English and I can understand it with my English. For sentences, it is very similar in the way the put up the parts so its no big deal. But that is still assistive, not reflecting one language on another.

How I learnt Programming & AI

When I was in my first grade in high school I signed up a lesson for web scraping in Python. I did not learn it well when it got hard as it is simply way too challenging learning alone.

Later we had AI, and it was GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 era. I was able to learn in a unbelievably fast way as whenever I came into a problem I have GPT to consult. This empowered my learning of nearly everything after since. It also granted me ability of quick info gathering and quick validation of ideas, also someone to talk to when I’m curious.

Later on it more like interest based as apart from all the lessons that I bought and conversations with AI, I also built projects based on my own interest, e.g., automating certain tasks, which thought was cool (and as a matter of fact, it is).

For me programming allows people to play a role as god, they create anything and they control everything. Programming can be very powerful.

Since I was heavily assisted by AI, which allowed me to learn and explore a lot of things and ideas, I’m also keen on keeping up with the AI development and using the most advanced models to empower myself. Since GPT-3, I’ve kept an eye on how AI has developed and what people have built with them, or what companies have published, aside from the models.

Later on I got to know Claude Code and Codex, later OpenCode and new Codex.

You know the story afterwards.

I have been keen on, and kept an eye on AI development, and actually experienced most of the tools, and know pretty much about vibe coding, tool calling, MCP, etc., and this is what hands-on practice has brought me.

I have also been wanting to have my own website, and then I knew WordPress from AI, a framework that constructs your website by allowing you to use templates and customized everything based on your own need, publish pages, posts, without having to know more about technology or coding. Then to make it public accessible, I rented a server. Also my first touch of Debian, a distro of Linux.

At first I managed my server using a GUI thing which I forgot the name. It gives me an interface via browser and I can see what’s on my server and then manage it, another example of this kind is 1Panel. That really gave me friendly experience of managing a server and deploying my website alongside with other stuff, like opensource projects and my own little projects.

This really gave me a lot of control and allowed me to experience the spirit of Geek. Whatever you need, you have community support, or you build your own, and then contribute to the community. It is genuinely a warm community, and Geek is really cool as it constantly encourages me to try out and explore new things, diminishing my fear against the unknown and failures. It gave me the chance of not knowing what I can do, but of knowing what I can become capable of.

Conclusion

There are a lot of examples I can bring up with, but they are all centered to one thing, that what you wanted to do might not be as difficult as you thought, and probably after once you tried and tackled it, it won’t ever be a problem anymore, you realized it is just as easy as anything, it is not a big deal. The most you need to deal with is your fear instead of the thing itself, that is why I encourage people to do whatever they want to do instead of only thinking about it.

In short:

• Interest Based.
• Project-led.
• Actual hands-on practice.
• Just do it!