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The DRUG of online tutorials

Douglas Parsons on October 12, 2020

Have you ever felt like you're stumbling in the dark trying to learn a new concept? Like you know where you're trying to get to, but absolutely no ...
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Toma

A tutorial should be 2-5 minutes video or straight to specific use case article. The endless courses shit is a marketing - content selling money machine - that some developers have archived. Good for them. I'm with you on - what to build. Finding meaningful problem that you could and should solve around the environment is hard...

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Mirko Vukušić • Edited

I mostly agree with you but want to be a voice in tutorials defense. A long time ago, when I started, there were no schools for programming, at least not in this region. I even finished high school and college not related to IT. But still, most of my life is around IT. Most of that knowledge was self-thought, via tutorials and other ways. Yes, back then there were also not that many tutorials like today, but there were some.

So, you're correct, but in my opinion, tutorials are not to blame, it's the "instant success" wish so visible in many places today. But shortcuts, speed, copy/paste, etc. hurts you in the long run. The "hands-on" way to go through tutorials is a different story. Immediately implementing it into projects too. Covering the basics before going through the tutorial(s) is also important. Even without covering the basics and hands-on approach, tutorials help to investigate new ways and technologies before diving into them and focus.

So, tutorials are a valuable tool in my opinion. But just one out of many in yout toolset. And like with any other tool, you also need to know how to use it.

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Douglas Parsons

I agree with you here. Tutorials themselves aren't useless. Like you've said, they definitely lower the barrier to entry and provide valuable resources.

It's absolutely the 'instant success' or image that you can 'learn everything in one place' that is really the damaging thing. Even hands-on following a tutorial you're unlikely to experience the same problems, or getting stuck, like you normally would.

Nothing replaces the actual practice and experience of writing code and hitting issues head-on.

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Andrew Baisden

It took me a long time to break free of tutorial hell but when I did my programming improved considerably. You go from being a puppet on strings to a real coder. 😎

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Douglas Parsons

That is exactly the point. People need to realise that this tutorial hell is a weird limbo.

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Harsh Rathod

Yeah, I'm also getting on the same path. 😎

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John Peters

Back in 1990s we always said 'There's no time like lab time'

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nove1398

I hope more persons read this article, I do believe most courses/tutorials lead you down this path. If you have a good foundation already then you can use them to brush up or implement a specific feature but ultimately you need to try your own projects.

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alyatek

The twitter link is broken.

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Douglas Parsons • Edited

Oooh, good spot. Fixed that now. Thanks for pointing it out. <3

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Tanvir Shaikh • Edited

i can agree coz i was very addicted to them, lot of tutorials i have watche, not every tutorial provides a valuable knowledge,some just teaches very basic stuff in fancy way & charges high.

what i can tell you is don't just watch them like a movie , do along with him, you can pause that video 100 times , replay it , do as he shows side by side.
Build what he builds , even if his giving git repo of that. getting stuck ask others , even if it looks difficult or complex at beginning . Just do it .
you'll instantly realize if you are making any mistakes .

the person teaching has a controlled evnivoment (PC), minor to no errors will occurs in his dev. but on your system it'll.

A project built in hour in a video will definately talke a day or 2 for you.

a suggestion coz that's how i learn.
Don't stop & hit that command.

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Gabriele Westh Mannucci • Edited

👏👏👏
I agree. I often feel trapped in the hurry of learning the "new thing" before I even practice the one I just finished learning about. 😅