learning the ropes

[KyleGoetz]

You must learn the stroke order because, once you advance beyond an elementary level of writing kanji and actually adapt it to your own handwriting style as you do for any langauge you can write, a wrong stroke order will make your characters illegible. You'll have curves going in the wrong ways and that will confuse everything.

It's best to learn it now. I used to think like you, but then I went beyond an elementary understanding of the language.