A big thing for me is going simultaneously top-down and bottom-up. Top-down establishes the high level concepts, underlying motivations, etc. It provides a map

A big thing for me is going simultaneously top-down and bottom-up. Top-down establishes the high level concepts, underlying motivations, etc. It provides a map of what there is to learn and a scaffolding upon which all new knowledge and concepts can be secured and contextualized. Bottom-up is where the rubber hits the road. Because disrupting a system and seeing the effects of that disruption is key to learning, bottom-up is a very active and iterative process. Write the “Hello, world!” program, and then see what happens when you change the text, remove the semicolon at the end of the line, etc.