Why I stopped following tutorials
I have been practicing programming for a while now. Like other career-changers, I started with a crash course in Python, and although it was a short one, it took me forever to finish it. Procrastination is a real thing, especially when one must learn to think differently and out of their comfort zone. I also did a few courses on the database, networking, Linux, etc. Everything that a software developer must know. Yes, it was hard to digest at first. And no, things don’t get any easier either. However, if you have a mentor, you could save yourself a lot of time from stumbling on subjects that are not essential nor important for your present purpose. So when people say, get yourself a mentor. Trust them.
After learning some theories and typical algorithms, what next? Get some hands-on practice or create something yourself. Thus, naturally, I searched for tutorials.
What is wrong with doing tutorials?
There is nothing wrong with that. I think many developers began learning this way. However, sometimes one may find that it is hard to understand why people do what they do, especially when the writers do not explain their intentions very well. Moreover, there are tons of tutorials available online. Therefore, you may get overwhelmed and sometimes lost in this jungle without a proper guide. Before beginning any tutorial, you may ask yourself, is it useful? But you may never know because you are still just a beginner.
Again, you should create your project, although starting something new is always quite daunting. What should I build, where should I start, or how should I do it. A simple idea at first might not be so simple after all.
For example, a web application on renting vehicles was one of my first pet projects. First, I started with database design. I built the backend and the APIs. Then, I wanted to show something that users can see and touch. I needed the front end for the project. I never did that before except for a short course on Spring MVC. So, I learned ReactJS. If you never learned HTML and CSS, better get on with it first before dividing into ReactJS. Otherwise, you will waste a lot of time figuring out how all the components work altogether as I did. After getting one thing down, I found out that I needed to learn another. It was like a Russian doll that keeps revealing itself every time I managed to achieve something.
Once I started to build my projects, I learned so much more, and everything began to make better sense. At least, this process helped me comprehend the fundamentals, because only from that would I be able to get on other subjects a little more advanced.
So, build your project even a simple one because it may not be so simple after all, and you will learn a lot from it.
Happy coding!
