While I’d take the advice of experienced C programmers over mine, in regard to general skill learning I’ve found ChatGPT is a good resource for organizing a lesson plan and figuring out where to begin.

It obviously probably isn’t the best to actual teach you itself, but it can help with the following on a lot of topics and skills:

• Pareto Principle: this is an idea that 80% of the results or outcome for something stem from 20% of the cause. You can apply this to learning complex subjects by identifying what that critical 20% is that yields the most amount of practical utility. I’ve found that if you simply ask ChatGPT to use the Pareto Principle to identify the most critical 20% of subject matter relevant to a skill it does a pretty good job.

• Let it create a study schedule for you. Tell it how much time per day or week you have available for study, and then ask it to create a basic study plan of topics distributed over that period.

• Use it to create visual exercises. If you come across a concept while studying that just isn’t making sense, you can often ask ChatGPT to create a visual exercise to illustrate the concept, which can help more efficiently unlock the “ah-ha” moments that are sometimes difficult to get to.

• let it suggest project ideas for your skill level