From beginner to advanced: picking a target you can actually reach
The level you name is the single input that decides whether a programme is useful or discouraging. Most people aim one step too far.
When urPath asks where you are and where you want to be, both answers matter, but the second one does the damage. Aim too high and every lesson assumes something you do not have; aim too low and you spend a fortnight on things you already knew.
Two levels is not a formality
The gap between them is what decides the size and the pace of the plan. Beginner to advanced in the same subject is a different document from intermediate to advanced — not a longer one, a differently ordered one, because the second can assume vocabulary the first has to teach.
A useful test for your current level
- Can you read a paragraph written for practitioners and follow it, even slowly?
- Do you know what the standard tools or terms are, even if you cannot use them?
- Have you made something, however small, with the subject?
Three noes means beginner, whatever your general competence elsewhere. That is not a judgement — it is the only answer that produces a plan you can start on Monday.
And for your target
Pick the level at which you would be useful to someone else, not the level at which you would be impressive. It is closer than it sounds, it is reachable in weeks rather than years, and it is the point where a subject stops being a project and becomes something you use.
You can always publish the finished programme to the library and start a further one. What you cannot do is recover the six weeks spent on a plan that was never going to fit.