I completely agree (that struggling is the most important part, and also about andrej's lectures - they almost spoon feed you imo), but I also didn't know papers took so long. Any particular papers that you remember implementing yourself that you would reccomend?
I believe which paper you implement matters less than you think. Most papers take some kind of well-known base model, make a few tweaks, and then run experiments. To implement it you need to follow the references and start with the base model, and 99% of all papers within some field will eventually lead you back to implementing the same base model, so it really doesn't matter where you start. The overlap is huge.
