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.
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.