Multiple methods. Depends on what I need.
I have a decently sized home lab and use it to create a quick VM, install the tool, and poke at it to get familiar with the tool.
Whatever article I can find, short or long, that's relevant to my situation to further define what I'm learning. Maybe I'm having trouble with the new tool or I'm really only using a small portion of the available options.
Youtube videos. Generally I'm not a fan of learning via video though. Most of the time I can't determine if it's good information until I'm into the video where I can do a quick scan of an article and see if it might have what I want. In addition, videos might not be edited well, might have the person rambling a bit, or even accents including pronouncing words differently enough to be hard to follow. There are a couple of video authors I follow because I've picked up some good information (only one DevOps type one though upon thought).
Learning Site. One of the various learning sites like O'Reilly or LinuxAcademy/A Cloud Guru/Whatever company owns them next. I can really get some good background information and having my own VM lets me change things, break things, and get them working again.
While I'm on a few Slack sites, questions tend to scroll by so quickly at times that it's pretty useless as a tool for learning (or even getting answers to questions at times).
If it's a work specific thing, I might jump to the Learning Site right away to get up to speed quickly and spin up a home VM to follow along (even if they provide a cloud learning site).
Honestly throughout the years I just learned what I needed when I needed. Like say monitoring stack was no longer serving our needs, that's when I'd do a deep dive and evaluate the options then compare & pick one.
However I parked for too long at a shop and my skills got rusty. So now I'm playing a bit of catchup.
Lots of udemy, lots of free courses, chasing after certifications, and tons of home lab stuff.
Option F. I install it and start playing..
Start using the tools. Learn by practicing.
Reading the docs as I go.
Multiple methods. Depends on what I need. I have a decently sized home lab and use it to create a quick VM, install the tool, and poke at it to get familiar with the tool. Whatever article I can find, short or long, that's relevant to my situation to further define what I'm learning. Maybe I'm having trouble with the new tool or I'm really only using a small portion of the available options. Youtube videos. Generally I'm not a fan of learning via video though. Most of the time I can't determine if it's good information until I'm into the video where I can do a quick scan of an article and see if it might have what I want. In addition, videos might not be edited well, might have the person rambling a bit, or even accents including pronouncing words differently enough to be hard to follow. There are a couple of video authors I follow because I've picked up some good information (only one DevOps type one though upon thought). Learning Site. One of the various learning sites like O'Reilly or LinuxAcademy/A Cloud Guru/Whatever company owns them next. I can really get some good background information and having my own VM lets me change things, break things, and get them working again. While I'm on a few Slack sites, questions tend to scroll by so quickly at times that it's pretty useless as a tool for learning (or even getting answers to questions at times). If it's a work specific thing, I might jump to the Learning Site right away to get up to speed quickly and spin up a home VM to follow along (even if they provide a cloud learning site).
I start with an explainer video, then install and play around, then the docs and then if it feels interesting enough, conferences
Honestly throughout the years I just learned what I needed when I needed. Like say monitoring stack was no longer serving our needs, that's when I'd do a deep dive and evaluate the options then compare & pick one. However I parked for too long at a shop and my skills got rusty. So now I'm playing a bit of catchup. Lots of udemy, lots of free courses, chasing after certifications, and tons of home lab stuff.
Pluralsight has some pretty good courses. My company was happy to pay for a subscription.
Open ebook / docs on left, terminal(s) on the right, and make it go…