I'm surprised the author makes no mention of centralized chains over testnets, since the importance of "skin in the game" as a learning strategy is emphasized.

To learn Ethereum, getting around the Binance Smart Chain or Polygon ecosystems can be done for very little cost, all the while involving tokens with actual market value (BNB and custodied ETH respectively), and mostly up to date EVM implementations.

Importantly, this will also confront users with a multitude of scams. I don't expect the amount and ingenuity of scams to die down, so learning to operate in an adversarial environment should be an integral part of any crypto education[1]. It would be dangerous to land into the real world of crypto with a false sense of security conferred by an otherwise realistic experience in value-less testnets. Technical expertise might deflect some scams, but a lot of them play more into social engineering (sometimes to an extreme degree[2]), which you will only encounter in live environments.

[1]: This applies to cryptography as well.

[2]: https://twitter.com/thomasg_eth/status/1492663192404779013