Well, I thought my one-liner was amusing anyway. Short stacking is a strategy that can be very profitable and in certain games even the most profitable. It's unpopular mainly because it's forcing everyone else to either play on your terms or not be able to play optimally against you because of other people in the hand.

It doesn't exactly stunt your growth, but it does teach only a subset of useful skills.

Whether short stacking is a good way to learn is debatable and mostly depends on the individual and how the learning is approached.

If you have a solid short stacking strategy you should be profitable at any limit, but as with any other strategy if you are still putting the strategy together or resolving difficult spots in your mind you are better off playing lower where the losses are more manageable.

Short stacking can also be one of the most idiot proof strategies. Not in the sense of the playing applying the short stack strategy being an idiot, but something you'll often see is people quoting words to the effect of that you cannot be owned at microstakes, you can only own yourself. You think the opponents are better than they are, and the play that would be correct against a better opponent is wrong against the idiot. A short stack strategy tends to be much more mathematical (as it is more mathematically simple) and you end up in much fewer spots where it matters whether your opponent is an idiot or a thinking player.