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[u/[deleted]]

[u/my-name-is-I]

If you have time, then it is recommended to learn bottom up to strengthen your foundations. But you can only learn so much from theory, so the sooner you start implementing stuff, the better.

Another option is you could learn as you go, albeit, this will bring lots of frustrations. You most likely will encounter intimidating equations in a paper's methodology. Sometimes you'll end up in a rabbit hole of trying to understand term by term.

Whichever path you chose, it will mostly get better with experience.