I learned 20+ years ago and I feel like back then it was a lot easier to learn. You would get a VB or C++ book and immerse yourself in it. The book would be self-contained --it had all the information you needed to become decent at that topic. Once you were done, you moved to the next book.

If I was learning today, I think that I would be completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that we have at our disposal. It would be harder to dive into one thing while being bombarded by the other 300 things you are supposed to learn because everyone is talking about them.

When I mentor young programmers, I advise them to focus on a single language/framework for a really long time, until they achieve real proficiency, and actively filter out everything else.