Email: The hidden cost of learning alone

Subject:
The hidden cost of learning alone
Received:
11/7/2025, 2:16:13 PM
From:
"Matt Pocock (AI Hero)" <matt@aihero.dev>
To:
porch.hat.81@rss.andrealin.it
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&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;I mentioned &lt;a href="https://click.convertkit-mail2.com/68un960d55t8h5owvkqaohpe0v0kkh9hgg553/dphehmue854p9zhm/aHR0cHM6Ly90b3RhbC10eXBlc2NyaXB0LmtpdC5jb20vcG9zdHMvaG93LWktbGVhcm5lZC1haS1hbmQtd2h5LXR1dG9yaWFscy1kb24tdC13b3JrLTE=" target="_blank" class="ck-link" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1803228336"&gt;last time&lt;/a&gt; how learning from projects is the best way to learn.&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;But doing it alone? It takes a lot of commitment.&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’ve got knowledge gaps…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul class="unordered_list" style="margin:1em 0;margin-left:1em;padding: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;list-style-position:outside !important"&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don’t know what you don’t know.&lt;/strong&gt; You don’t know how big the terrain is, where the crevasses are. You don’t even have a map. It’s the whole unknown unknowns thing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The things you do know are probably gleaned from social media.&lt;/strong&gt; You might have picked up some buzzwords somewhere. Maybe you’ve got a project idea based on something you saw someone say. Not a solid foundation.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social media is faddish and makes a poor teacher.&lt;/strong&gt; This week RAG is dead, next week agents are dead and RAG is back, baby. This week AI is great, next week AI is terrible. You can’t learn if you change course every other day.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&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 you’ve got technical difficulties…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul class="unordered_list" style="margin:1em 0;margin-left:1em;padding: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;list-style-position:outside !important"&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TypeScript + AI is a young ecosystem.&lt;/strong&gt; You can’t just download a pre-built framework and start tweaking immediately. There’s no Ruby on Rails for AI just yet (although the AI SDK comes pretty close).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There’s a pretty big getting started tax&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to design and make a plan, you need to figure out your setup, you need to choose the right tools. Which honestly can be a lot of fun… if you’re like me and you enjoy that stuff. But if you are just trying to make progress? It’s a massive time suck.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You’ve&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt; got to keep &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;yourself&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt; on track.&lt;/strong&gt; You’re the one who has to give yourself structure and accountability, avoid distractions and dead ends and rabbit holes. You’ve got to make sure you’re actually learning what you want to learn.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li class="list_item" style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don’t know where the tooling, hosting, configuration potholes are.&lt;/strong&gt; And every technical project has them.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&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;This is something I found when I was working with Evalite. I wanted to learn how evals worked, but most of setting up Evalite was diving into Vitest’s Node API.&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;Gah.&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;I just wanted to learn how AI worked!&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;You’re on your own. No one else will know your project like you do. They won’t be familiar with your code. It’s really hard to get help when you get stuck. You can show people little bits, but that’s like viewing the landscape through a telescope. Real, substantive, big picture help? You’ll have to figure out how to do without.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="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;padding:10px 20px;margin:0 0 20px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-width:5px;border-left-color:#e1e1e1" class="blockquotes"&gt;&lt;div class="blockquotes-line"&gt;If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.&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;In my next few emails, I’m going to tell you how I use my own personal AI assistant, how you can personalize AI, and how you can build a perfectly custom assistant for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; — tailored to your work, using your data, and learning from your habits and preferences.&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;If you want to do it on your own, you absolutely can use these emails as a guide.&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;But if you want to go fast &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; far? You’ll love my next course cohort.&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;I’ve done all the heavy lifting for you.&lt;/strong&gt; It’s researched and planned, designed from the ground up, and tested. Every lesson is paired with building and problem-solving so that you can gain experience and learn the right things at the right time.&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 you won’t be alone. You’ll work alongside a community of other developers building the same thing. When you get stuck, they’ll have your context. Real help. And you’ll get it from me too.&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 at the end, &lt;strong&gt;you’ll have a personalized AI system that you’ve built&lt;/strong&gt; to help you in your work and life.&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;
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