Yall, I think that I'm stuck!
This is what I was saying to myself a month ago. I did not know that there was such thing as "tutorial hell" until I was in it.
But I love tutorials!!
Now, don't come for me saying, "how am I suppose to learn if I don't do tutorials?" No boo, do your tutorials. But, don't get stuck in just doing tutorials. Because if you are just doing tutorials and are not practicing what I've been learning, then technically, you ain't learning shit. (insert shrugs)
Get out!!
I'm saying this because I was doing the exact same thing. I was stuck just doing tutorials and I wasn't practicing any of the material I was learning. And when it came time to do a project, I didn't know anything.
I've learned that writing bad code is how you eventually write good code. Since I'm teaching myself this material, following FreeCodeCamp lessons, it was easy for me to get stuck in the tutorial hellhole. And I was honestly enjoying my time in tutorial hell. Until, you know, a project lit some fire under my butt.
How to get out?
Well, I started practicing (coding) what I was currently learning in tutorials, in Visual Studio Code (VSCode). Since I'm currently learning how to make graphs using D3, I started making my own graphs in VSCode. Yes, they looked really shitty at first, but the more I worked on them, the better they looked over time.
To help you out, here is something to do:
After you are finished with one lesson or tutorial, make the exact same thing in VSCode. And then, make your own version of that tutorial. Then BOOM! That could be considered a project to add under your belt.
Top comments (4)
Wow, I think all self-taught developers have experienced it. But I also have some tips.
✅Practice what you learned.
✅Teach what you learned. You can write blogs, make videos or anything. Teaching is a good way to learn.
✅Become part of a community. You can get support from other members.
If you are stuck, remember that the more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know. Eventually, you'll master it. It has to do with the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I love this!! These are awesome tips! Teaching is always the best way to learn. :)
I remember many years ago when I got stuck in that black hole that is tutorial hell. I would follow some tutorials and read some code but then I could not figure out any practical examples that I could do outside of tutorials.
What helped me was finding lots of real world use cases for all of the code that I was learning. Like using arrays and objects to create lists of items on a page in an e-commerce store. And getting data back from API's and learning how to traverse them to build apps.
Sounds straightforward now but when you are a self-taught developer who has no idea what is the correct way for doing things it becomes a challenge.
I finally figured out how to exist in tutorial hell, because in order to learn things, especially the basics. You often need tutorials. I was taking Wes Bos’s course, ES6 for everyone when I decided that after each lesson, I made an app. Just a quick one with some html and css, then used the things I learned in the lesson for the JS. For example, I used a for/of loop or arrow functions with a made-up dataset. Then used some DOM work to display it on the html.