I agree. My father was working in thermodynamics, and he quietly steered me from tricks to being able derive things myself. For example, in cross-multiplication, percents, unit conversion, long division.

I remember him saying: "Forget all rules about percentages. All you need to know it's like a number multiplied by 100."

He also wasn't fond of mole as unit, he felt that it obscures things especially for students.

Later I applied the same method myself on algebra (deriving binomial expressions), trigonometric functions (deriving constants from unit circle, other relations from the basic relations of sin(x+y)) and so on.

I guess this actually applies to any field. Do not start with tricks and shortcuts until you understand and can do the deed with basic methods.