How I learn a new tech in 2026 (without tutorials)
Official docs, a real project, and Claude Code as a pair. That's the whole method. No course, no cert, no YouTube.
You've spent 40 hours watching courses on Hono and you still can't build a project on your own. You open VSCode, stare at the empty file, and don't know where to start. It's not that you can't learn — it's that you're learning with the wrong method.
When I need to learn a new tech, what I do is unglamorous. I open the official documentation. I read it, mark it, interpret it. Then I open a real project — something I actually need to build, not a practice to-do app. And I give Claude Code the context: the docs, examples, custom skills, MCPs if the tech has any. Then we start building.
That's the whole method. No tutorial. No course. No certification. The only thing I do "before" is read the docs to get the conceptual model.
Why does it work? The docs give you the concepts in their cleanest form — no instructor oversimplifying them for you. The real project gives you the concrete problem that forces you to apply what you read. And the AI saves you boilerplate and repetitive setup, while you read every line of what it generated. You learn by doing and reading what was done. Not by watching someone do it on YouTube.
The rule that organizes the whole thing: you direct, the AI executes. You interpret the docs. You know what the problem needs. You break it into steps. The AI takes those steps and turns them into code. In between, you read what was generated, understand it, fix it if needed. That's where the actual learning happens. Without that direction, the AI spits out pretty, empty code. With it, you move 5x faster without losing comprehension.
When the tech is very new, you have to work harder on the context you give. More docs, more examples, more specific instructions. The AI isn't magic — it's an executor that needs context. If you don't understand the tech well enough to explain what you want, you can't use it well. There's no shortcut: you go back to the docs until the conceptual model clicks.
The method isn't "AI teaches you." It's "you learn faster because you're not wasting time on setup, while your brain focuses on what matters: understanding the tech and solving the real problem."
It holds up exactly as much as you hold up as an interlocutor. The AI is as good as you are at asking.
Do you do it differently? Write me at hello@sebastianfermanelli.com — I'm curious how others approach it.