so i've been a tech for about 8 months now and keep hearing people talk about cw and how great it is and i kind of want to learn but honestly have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and they all seem different and i dont know which approach is actually the right one. some people told me to just memorize the dots and dashes on paper and other people say thats the worst thing you can do. also is there a certain speed i should start at or does it matter? sorry if this is a dumb question i just feel like there's too much conflicting info out there

yeah the dots and dashes thing is a trap honestly, i did that when i was starting out and had to basically unlearn everything. your brain ends up counting instead of just hearing the character as a sound and once you get above like 10 wpm it completely falls apart. the thing that actually worked for me was the Koch method, you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20 wpm, and only add a new one when you can copy the current set at like 90% accuracy. it sounds slow and kind of frustrating at first but your brain learns to recognize the rhythm of each letter instead of counting. LCWO dot net is free and pretty good for that, also the Morse Toad app if you want something on your phone. just do like 15 minutes a day consistently and dont skip days, thats the part most people mess up including me

i'm kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for maybe two months now. the app i ended up sticking with is called Morse-It and also been using the CW academy stuff from the ARRL, they have online classes and the instructors are actual hams who are really patient with beginners. the one thing i'll say is dont get discouraged when it clicks for some letters and not others, G and Q messed me up for like three weeks straight lol. also apparently listening to actual qso's on the air even when you cant copy most of it helps your ear get used to real sending which is different from the computer generated stuff