Email: How I learned AI (and why tutorials don't work)

Subject:
How I learned AI (and why tutorials don't work)
Received:
11/5/2025, 3:06:15 PM
From:
"Matt Pocock (AI Hero)" <matt@aihero.dev>
To:
porch.hat.81@rss.andrealin.it
&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
&lt;head&gt;
&lt;style&gt;.ck-link { text-decoration: underline; }&lt;/style&gt;
&lt;style&gt;.ck-link { text-decoration: underline; }&lt;/style&gt;
&lt;style&gt;@media only screen { .email * { word-break: break-word; } }
@media screen and (max-width: 384px) { .mail-message-content { width: 414px !important; } }
@media only screen { .email * { word-break: break-word; } }
@media screen and (max-width: 384px) { .mail-message-content { width: 414px !important; } }
@media only screen and (max-width:600px) { .ck-mobile-font-size { font-size:50px !important; }  }
@media only screen and (max-width:600px) { .ck-mobile-font-size { font-size:50px !important; }  }&lt;/style&gt;
&lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;
&lt;body style="margin:0;padding:0;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;-ms-text-size-adjust:100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust:100%"&gt;
&lt;div class="email" style="margin-left:18px;margin-right:18px"&gt;
&lt;table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:separate;mso-table-lspace:0pt;mso-table-rspace:0pt;width:100%;margin:0 auto"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="vertical-align:top"&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I build stuff.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;That’s the answer when people ask how I learned AI. How I got good at TypeScript. How I learn anything, really.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Watch all the videos you want. Read all the docs. But you won’t actually know if you understand something until you try to build with it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;And here’s the thing: if you skip the building part, that knowledge evaporates. You think you’ve got it, until you need it under a real deadline. Then you’re relearning everything from scratch, stressed and behind schedule.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;I pick a project that solves a real problem for me.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;I’m a tinkerer. Always have been. The joy of making something work, especially something that makes my life easier, is why I got into software in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;When I wanted to learn about evals, I built &lt;a href="https://click.convertkit-mail2.com/38ugk230wwukh2zo92varh4qpepnns7h5522q/dphehmue8ekdzghm/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXZhbGl0ZS5kZXY=" target="_blank" class="ck-link" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1802587985"&gt;Evalite&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;When I wanted to understand coding agents, I took on pro bono work rebuilding a charity’s website.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Real projects. Real problems. Not toys. Not simplified demos.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;The project forces you to learn what actually matters. Skills connect. You see why things work. And you walk away with something useful, not another abandoned tutorial repo in your GitHub.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My next cohort works the same way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;We’re building a personal assistant. A real one. Something you’ll actually use.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;You’ll work with &lt;a href="https://click.convertkit-mail2.com/38ugk230wwukh2zo92varh4qpepnns7h5522q/e0hph0u7q7em93f8/aHR0cHM6Ly90b3RhbC10eXBlc2NyaXB0LmtpdC5jb20vcG9zdHMvMy1haS1wcm9ibGVtcy10aGF0LWFjdHVhbGx5LW1hdHRlci1pbi0yMDI2" target="_blank" class="ck-link" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1802587986"&gt;the three core problems I outlined earlier this week&lt;/a&gt; - retrieval, memory, and human-in-the-loop. You’ll learn the patterns by using them in a real application, not just reading about them in isolation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;You’ll learn AI SDK v5, TypeScript, and AI engineering principles. But more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;you’ll walk away with a working tool that makes you more productive&lt;/strong&gt;. Something you can keep building on after the cohort ends. Patterns you can apply to your next project.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Because that’s how learning sticks. Build something real. Everything else follows.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;-Matt&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;div class="email-footer"&gt;&lt;table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:separate;mso-table-lspace:0pt;mso-table-rspace:0pt;width:100%;margin:0 auto"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="vertical-align:top"&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class="email-footer" style="color:#4b4b4b"&gt;
  &lt;p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5;color:#4b4b4b; margin:1em 0;font-family:Arial,-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;;font-size:12px;line-height:1.5;display:block;margin:13px 0;"&gt;&lt;a href="https://click.convertkit-mail2.com/38ugk230wwukh2zo92varh4qpepnns7h5522q/08h4p5pzfgu2g2xn03cl/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudG90YWx0eXBlc2NyaXB0LmNvbS91bnN1YnNjcmliZWQ_c2VxdWVuY2U9YWlfaGVybw==" trigger-id="5153768" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1802587987"&gt;Unsubscribe from AI Hero Emails&lt;/a&gt;. You can also &lt;a href="https://unsubscribe.convertkit-mail2.com/38ugk230wwukh2zo92varh4qpepnns7h5522q" style="color:#0875c1"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:12px"&gt;unsubscribe&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:12px"&gt; from all emails at any time.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5;color:#4b4b4b; margin:1em 0;font-family:Arial,-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;;line-height:1.5;display:block;margin:13px 0;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10px"&gt;12333 Sowden Rd, Ste. B, PMB #97429, Houston, TX 77080&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;!-- --&gt;
&lt;img src="https://open.convertkit-mail2.com/38ugk230wwukh2zo92varh4qpepnns7h5522q" alt="" style="border:0 none;display:block;height:auto;line-height:100%;outline:none;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;max-width:100%"&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
Email Content
