New to programming, Stuck in Tutorial Hell? Read this!
Tutorial hell is real and it can cause immense suffering. You might have been a victim of tutorial hell without being aware of it. lets understand, what is it and how to tackle it.
What is tutorial hell?
Tutorial hell referred as When a new programmer is enrolled in multiple programming courses and is able to finish small project(s) led by tutor; however, not able to code anything else apart from some input based adventures or a simple webpage.
So technically, you know the syntax but not able to build anything intersting which can cause frustration and burnout. Hence, all of a sudden you find yourself stuck in black hole and loose all motivation.
Please note — Coding tutorials are predesigned and instructor has taken his/her time to debug projects behind the scenes, what you guys see is an end product. Not saying all these tutorial are bad, thats not the point, the point is you cannot learn just by watching and following tutorials. Fortunately, there are many ways you can avoid/escape tutorial hell.
How to exit tutorial hell Black hole
Build small projects
First and foremost, start from small atomic projects, avoid building heavy duty websites like Amazon or Apple.
You learn how to crawl and walk first before you learn how to run.
Here are 10 beginner projects you can try:
- Vannilla Javascript Stopwatch
- Javascript Calculator
- Javascript Drumkit
- Hangman game
- Quiz application using Js
- Weather app
- Games like Pong, Maze
- To-do list
- Javascript mouseover effect
- Guess the Colour game
Once you are comfortable building the projects I mentioned above, you can move to the next level project and if you find yourself stuck, read the offical documentation or try google;however, build something of your own without anyones help.
Tip — For intermediate to advanced websites like Apple, Netflix, try breaking website into little sections, and take it easy, build one section a day; Do it slow, however do it properly.
Practice makes perfect
Repitition is the key to master anything. Try to practice and apply the concepts you learn everyday.
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times — Bruce Lee
Let's say you learnt about arrays and event-listeners, try to understand real-world examples of these concepts. Additionally, create eventslistners multiple times to grasp the proper understanding about how they work.
Teach someone or Write a blog
You can try teaching someone and if you think you are not ready to teach in-person, write a techinal blog about the concepts you have learnt. By doing this, you skills would hone and your brain would keep all the information in permanent memory.
Debugging
A good programmer must know how to use debugging tools; your life would be alot better with this particular skill.
You will have always have bugs regardless how pro are you at programming. Hence, one must learn how to use console.log() and browser dev tools to find bugs. This would save hours of staring at code looking for bug(s).
Ask for Help
Don't be shy, if you are struggling, talk to someone who is working in the domain already, try connecting with senior developers online, using Twitter, discord or other social media.
Conclusion
These we my two cents for the people who are just getting started, now go on and build project(s) on your own without anyones help and ask for help or follow offical documentation if you stuck.
