i suppose the alternative is that i watch videos and quickly realize what kind of approach not to take. not that the videos are bad, just that i've run into some material that is so early level that it has several inefficiencies i would probably improve right out of the gate.
i'm still finding myself falling back on the idea of a wave collapse function kind of approach. but i'm not sure, it still might make more sense to generate the full layout of a level in a more grid-like manner so that it's more predictable (and easier to tackle right away). wave function work on individual room generation, though...