Project tutorials are a very popular way to start building your first few projects. But unfortunately most people go about it in the wrong way and don’t end up learning very much in the process.
In this article, I will provide some tips on how to properly learn from tutorials and gain confidence to start building your own projects. I will also provide advice on how to avoid tutorial hell.
I’m not a fan of normal tutorials because they start from a point where everything is installed and running and the project already initialized and the file in your face ready to write on it. But how to get there? Magic.
I’ve had exactly the opposite thought - every tutorial or explanation I find starts from scratch with create-react-app or something when I already have a project and I just want to know how to use your library.
Yeah this gets to me as well. Worst of all is that I think these people are missing a trick. Create another article with the basic setup and link through to it instead and you get a free SEO win.
I was thinking about picking languages from scratch. If it’s about libraries it is kinda expected to know some basics.
I have been through the same. I can find a lot of tutorials on the super easy stuff but more advanced or just a bit more advance stuff is up to me to figuring out. It is so bad that i start with documentations first then try it out myself, then google problems. I do not checkout tutorials anymore, only if i am super new on the subject. Chat gpt has been a lot more helpful, either it helps me with the problem or give me hints on what to google for or try out.
How far do you take that? I don’t think tutorials should cover installing an operating system or the programming language being covered unless the tutorial is specifically about those topics. Having focus on the project itself rather than the prerequisites is generally a good approach unless there’s something specific about the prerequisites that are unusual.
What I’m trying to say is that I have to drop a lot of tutorials because I can’t even start running the code locally. If I don’t know how to use the code I’m learning outside the browser is like I’m learning nothing.
What programming language? You might have to back to basics. I know what you mean though. That was my frustration as well. The basics aren’t covered well enough on many courses, and learning in a browser IDE adds anxiety when following tutorials if you don’t know how to set up your environment.
If it’s with Python, maybe I can help. Getting your environment set up is the most important part. I like to use pycharm, it forces you into virtual environments but that’s a good practice to follow and gives you plenty of practice with the basics since you’ll have to install your dependencies for every project.
Sometimes the dependencies change, and it’s nice to know what version you previously used vs how the new package version works.
Python was not such a problem because you can make a .py file and start doing things. More or less like a js. But when I want to make my own things with compiled programs like c++, rust, haskell… I get stuck.