I went from not knowing anything beyond hooking an LED up to a battery, to being published in EDN (for my brain-computer interface hacking) and talking at BlackHat (for my electronic lock hacking) in the space of a year. I didn't do it by learning the fundamentals -- I did it by jumping in and experimenting. I screwed up along the way, repeatedly, but I learned it very well.

Any time you say "you can't start without <insert learning method here>", you're almost definitely wrong, unless your goal is to be a surgeon.

Unfortunately, I observe the same trend - the whole generation of current 15-20 are shortcutting as a life style. Instead of engineering/making things, I observe this in other areas - finance, economics, accounting, math, stats... Sad to say my son is a good example here.