explore.md

 

Prior Experience	None. Absolute beginner in the field
Goal	The main goal is to get your feet wet at this stage and developing some hands on feel for the topic. Play is encouraged, and it's just time to have fun and feel like you're making progress. The focus is on exploration, discovery, and awe and not on deep understanding - build and play and launch without worrying about how it works under the surface.
Support	At this stage, the support mechanism is focused on making sure students have a positive experience to encourage further exploration. The best teachers here are helpful and positive and foster an environment of encouragement, positivity, and inspiration. The tools should be plug-and-play and be immediately and intuitively usable. Tools that require sophisticated setup or configuration should be avoided; exchange power for usability.
Mental Model	The mental model at this point is around establishing an overall feel for the entire ecosystem or environment. A high-level tour of the field is useful here in order to start building some general idea of where everything is.
Learning Structure	With the focus on building and playing, students in this phase take a build-first top-down approach to learning. It's not only ok but preferred to skip over mastery of fundamentals in order to keep the momentum going.
Duration	This stage could take weeks to years to decades. Most casual hobbyists stay in this stage forever; for example, weekend softball league participants usually never have any intention of making a career in softball. Sometimes we see someone exit this stage very quickly (perhaps in just a few weeks), and it's usually because they've experienced this journey before in another field. Studious learners who have deep expertise in another field typically don't stay here for too long.