The DIY quarters for the handyman with an ion

We all have questions. We all have visions. We live full of examples and answers all around us. Our brain is essentially an exceptionally powerful biological computer.
So why can't we all ask the same questions? Why can't we learn and know the same information the same way?
We all have learning curves. We all stop for some reason or another. We memorize a great deal for long periods of time.
Not everything can be remembered forever. We have to remember our passwords or phone numbers.
That's not exactly useful information.

I threw a lot of questions at you. The best way to learn something is to know it. We try to solve a vast number of problems in life. Not a lot of people tell you how to really do it. The best way to learn is to fail. If everything was so easy; so easily solved; so easily completed; there would be nothing to know.
Let's chop down a few questions. We honestly learn the same way. On some scale or another something is adding -1 from 2 and getting 1. We put + and - together and the lightbulb turns on. Cars have all the same parts, but they're in different shapes. Computers are all the same, but they changed the shapes.
Hold on now. If we break everything into their basic form, into their elements, we can gain a lot of perspective. We might see what the robot is doing on the outside, but we know nothing until we take it apart. The motors do something. The wires connect somewhere. There is a microphone. There is a speaker. There are lights. There is some computer board and it's doing something.

I went into radioshack looking for a book on electronics one day. The book had tutorials on how to destroy perfectly working circuits. You learned how to make something. Then you eventually learned how to fry it. It's a pretty simple technique on learning about something. I wonder why potentiometers aren't called NPN resistors. Think about that.

I took a few classes on computers. I had some programming courses. The first programming class I had was Visual Basic in early 2015. I had finished writing a few html scripts for a friend of mine when I was ten years old, but this was pretty close to the real deal. I had no idea what I was getting into. I honestly had no idea how computers really worked. I learned about it in that class. I had a particular problem in the class I can remember fairly clearly. I had trouble running my first program due to a major error. You should note that it was visual basic. We had all written an entire program without troubleshooting a single line. RIP My friend due west pointed out that I assigned every variable backwards. Now it's 2020 - look what I know :3

I'm sure at some point we will learn to realize there is more important things to memorize than our grocery list. I believe the future will project this vision. We can and we should know how correctly wire an random LCD we found on eBay. We should know how to plug a shield/hat onto our device and install the appropriate libraries. We should all know where to click upload. We should all know simple unix commands and run programs without/without a GUI. It's super simple stuff, seriously.

When I have a problem, like most people, I google it. I prefer to read forums about text. I prefer to see video on runtimes. I try to read books that talk mostly about how to use specific libraries about software I'm using. The best way to learn from these is to actually run their lines. The more you program new things, the more you find out about them. Electronics and most other things work the same way.

New story. I probably don't need to introduce myself on RS Community(because you can click my profile). I'm the guy building the Tracbot I named "Giz" for short. It took me about six months to find a solution to fighting my worst enemy. The tool I used is called an example library/file. Now I can win those fights against digimonsters that for some reason have something against robots.
I learned that a lot of Arduino equipment usually has an Adafruit library for it. That's very convenient because you will now be using these libraries to learn how to impliment example lines into your new projects.
You don't need to learn how to build anything. Chances are, someone has components to fit your idea. Taking the idea from other projects is an important skill. For example, I had an idea to put together different sensors and display their information on an LCD.
I started by wiring a color LCD to my UNO. I didn't know how to wire it at first. I spent a few days taking notes (from different articles) on where to wire them, and what libraries I should use to support my Arduino screen. I discovered the compatibility of Adafruits libraries with one of my Arduino LCD screens.
I did the same for the sensors. I researched each one individually before installing them. I implimented them individually, and tested them with example sketches. Then I put two appropriate sketches side by side. Since both of them work, all I have to do is merge them into a new file. I took two working sketches, and made it into my project.

These are just many different examples of how to learn to teach yourself. Every time you succeed is an example. You study what went right even if it all goes wrong. If you can make the comparison between what goes right and what went wrong, you will eventually find any answer you're looking for.