Code Tutorials Are Holding You Back

Have YOU been doing too many tutorials? Time to break the habit. The best way to learn is to BUILD, not watch.
Yes, I'm effectively telling you to close this video. That's fine. GO BUILD SOMETHING. PLEASE. And subscribe if you can ❤️
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Mir KILLING it gotdam

[@codybishop7526]

It’s also important to note that people who put together those tutorials spent days, maybe weeks, putting that tutorial together to be perfect. They had to do research and make an outline. They aren’t just regurgitating the information off the top of their head.

[@gorunmain]

Thank you for this insight it puts me at ease.

[@ericng8807]

But alot of them do regurgitate tho. For example guy above me ^ saw this tutorial hell video than made his own a few hours later but it's worse and less insightful lol

[@cryMoreLoL]

@@TomDoesTech but uploaded 8 hours ago? 🙄

[@igordasunddas3377]

Really? 🤣

[@OfoeNelson]

And most importantly they are using two screens. Reading code off one and typing that same code on the other "tutorial" screen.

[@f0lderfile]

only semi related; but one of my most favorite vocabulary from learning japanese has been aspiration / ambition = 抱負; written with the kanji for "embrace" 抱, and "defeat / failure" 負

[@TomDoesTech]

This is an important message. I made a video about this but haven't published it. I think part of the problem is that new devs are scared of failing, so they keep saying "I need to learn X before I can do Y", when they really should just be doing Y. Edit: The New Boston PHP days were fun :) Edit 2: fk it, I published it

[@cBake0]

Nothing feels better than when you solve your own problem successfully.

[@bilalshaikh6603]

Where’s the video I couldn’t finf it on your channel

[@codewithguillaume]

When I do recruitments I look first at personal projects. Not often at technical tests. Tutorials are good to get a base. Projects are good to get experience. Tutorials don’t give experience.

[@Ajvej]

I wish more videos like this existed and more people were told this. I espaced tutorial hell after I watched you build roundest project and noticed that people dont actually know perfectly everything in a video and people still search for stuff. It was unbelievably demotivating, when I watched those tutorials and they perfectly knew what to do(since they prepare their stuff) and I always felt like I am always missing something. I since started a project and learn so much quicker than any tutorial could. Thank you for your work, it helped me to move on so much faster in my web dev career than anyone else did!

[@aabluedragon]

I highly agree, often I find myself over-watching tutorials, wanting to go through everything... it is a tedious process, and unless I practice along the way, the materials won't "soak in".. and will fade. so.. practice makes perfect.

[@marekbee]

The worst is that most of the tutorials show just a basic stuff. They usually don't dive deeper into details. They are multiple tutorials on BASICS of Sveltejs, Astrojs, Supabase, but they are very few diving deeper and showing real life projects. That's why I really learn a lot from your videos. They are much more production-oriented than majority of the tutorials out there. Also there are very fe tutorial showing you deployment process and managing different environments and while working on the projects.

[@trashAndNoStar]

Truth (re: first 3 sentences). Once you're at intermediate level-no longer need the "hello world" and "getting started with ..." _but_ not yet advanced enough to figure out everything on you own in a real-world use case... welp, good luck looking for tutorials/resources.

[@nanonkay5669]

This is a very good point. Everything is for beginners. Doesn't take you to any advanced level at all

[@AtulChaudharythyo]

Very well said. I was in tutorial hell for a very long time. I think building and learning things when you get stuck at something is faster way of learning than just learning things and don't know where to user then initially.

[@andrewc8125]

This is truly the best instruction! Love your Skateboard example!

[@primado]

Hello Theo, I found your channel today when I searched for Zustand VS Redux. And I watch your video which led me to this content. I recently wrote a blog on Hashnode on how I escaped from tutorial hell and most of what I wrote are what you said. You just motivated me to keeping going on and building projects, This video will be a fuel to propel me through this year in my Dev life. Thank you Theo.

[@inasuma8180]

The best thing I ever did was implement libraries I use every day, but as a simplified version to learn the core concepts. That type of practice really helped me with learning new tech and tools much faster.

[@pfcokelly]

"have the energy for" that's what I'm struggling with. I didn't realize how much tutorials motivate me, the ability to pause the motivation and pick it up on demand. If I try that on my projects I just lose all will to code. I need to embrace feeling dumb!

[@pencilcheck]

Tutorials are usually toy sized problems that doesn't address other problems that are usually messy and hard in real life projects. By building, you essentially have to start thinking about how the things in the tutorial can help you solve some head start so you can focus on other harder and real problems

[@alexferreira1534]

That’s one of the most motivating videos I’ve ever seen ❤ Theo is a indeed a hero

[@DavidThorpe]

I didn't know you were a skateboarder. I don't think many people here understand how much effort and hard those tricks you showed are. Sick!

[@riskitall7421]

Good take man 👍🏻 there’s a lot of truth here. I think people get caught up with the obsession and entertainment of learning that they forget to build and narrow what they actually need to know. Awesome stuff.

[@arturoguillen]

This is an eye opener. Thank you so much!

[@Nathan00at78Uuiu]

This was such a good video for me to watch. The main thing was realizing I will never know any language or technology in the complete sense. That is really freeing to know that. It’s good coming from Theo since he clearly can code and so if he doesn’t know X, but is still able to do a lot with what he does know then that just goes to prove being successful at developing doesn’t require knowing X completely or near completely. It’s about making stuff and each thing we make will require knowing some subset of some language or technology.

[@rally2433]

This calmed me down a bit because I see a lot of my peers (well, not literally everyone) get into various jobs or opportunities. I'll do my best to build stuff too, along with sprinkling in some tutorials. I hope it will be the required change ❤

[@huncho6295]

I ever on this situation where i cannot get out of tutorial hell, and then one day i realized that programming is not about getting much knowledge to start with but programming is about what you gonna build and get the experiences. And now im building a lot of web app and got a lot of experiences.

[@nahfamimgood]

10/10 recommend. The amount of side projects that i never finished helped me so much. I just build shit constantly. Most of it was garbage that taught me lessons.

[@ran5001000]

Hey man, I just found your channel a few days ago. I am a backend dev, and after watching a few of your videos I love your content. This video is important, very much so, thank you for uploading it, just susbribed.

[@johanneswelsch]

I don't quite agree, but I watch tutorials differently from others. I do a completely different project from what the instructor is doing and specifically give all my variables different names. That's what I would recommend, because you quickly run into problems that the tutorial does not have since your project is different. And only you can solve these problems; that's where you learn a ton. If the tutorial creates a blog website, you create a phone book. I watched Net Ninjas paid React course and made a KZbin clone while the tutorial made a "Projext Management Site", something completely different. Also always choose a different CSS framework from what the instructor uses, or better yet use pure .css or styled-components, which is also css, this way you learn css quickly. You still kinda follow the tutorial, but Your project structure is different, your components are different, the routes are different, very often you have new ideas to add something that isn't there in tutorial. This practice was key to me finding a job in 12 months (started not knowing what a variable is). Blindly copying tutorial code is bad; you probably don't much attention and won't be able to reproduce the code later in a similar situation, because this way nothing sticks.

[@unowenwasholo]

I think an argument could be made that if you are trying to build something and you're watching a tutorial, something's wrong if you finish the tutorial and haven't written a line of code. I almost never finish a tutorial unless I'm watching it to explicitly learn about a new feature in a framework I'm already comfortable in. The moment I'm able to scrap something together-connecting to Discord with a bot, running create-react-app locally, loading some data through an express server, connecting to and querying w/e database-I'm off trying to build whatever reason it was that I opened up the tutorial. All these frameworks, tools, etc. are "solutions" and they won't solve anything if you don't have a "problem" you're trying to solve. If you don't have a problem to solve, start there, then learn how to program a solution as quick and dirty as you can. You can learn stuff like "best practices" after you have something running. (Note: "a solution", not "the solution". "The solution" doesn't exist.) Edit: I wrote this half-way through the video, and... yup. Exactly. lol

[@stevepottz111]

Thanks for this video. Totally what I’ve been thinking lately.

[@ndstephens]

I really needed to hear this. I've heard the message before, but exactly what you said and how you said it made the difference. Thanks

[@bandito_kek]

This video, your words, gave me a mind blowing epiphany. I’ve been so worried about being a fraud in my career, hobbies, and endeavors, that I never had the mindset to eat dirt and LEARN from my own mistakes. Thank you, you can’t imagine the ambition and motivation you’ve instilled in me just now!

[@jdubz8173]

I've never really felt motivated to complete anything on my own. The only real way to get myself into a job in web development was to offer to work for the at-the-time wage of an average Walmart employee, lol. I did some stuff on my own but I knew I wouldn't go anywhere without a real deadline. That first job was like squeezing 5 years of experience into 2. The next job I took after that felt like everyone was going in slow motion compared to me. Most of the people around me at that time took school classes. I on the other hand, was solely focused on effective coding on the job after making many many mistakes. Never underestimate learning through failure. It's tough, but you build a real confidence after having gone through it.

[@liondevelops]

Best video I have watched on the subject. You really made this click in my head Theo, thank you.

[@JenDevDesign]

Thank you. Skateboard analogy perfect.

[@berkayurun]

Hi Theo! Any chance of also discussing about approaching and to some degree designing a UI as a frontend developer? Given that your target audience is more towards junior+ developers, I believe we would highly benefit from your experience in regards to design aspect as well!

[@Remiwi-bp6nw]

This makes so much more intuitive sense to me now than it did 6-12 months ago. I would have watched a video on React Query back then and I would have been like "ok? I guess that makes sense". But having dealt with the problems React Query is trying to solve, it's like I instantly understand what it is, why it's important, when I'd use it, etc.

[@PaulSebastianM]

Right from the first 2 minutes this already seemed like the best rant on tutorial hell ever!

[@yanivhe]

You really change my perspective. thank you!

[@astroid-ws4py]

This talk can also be expanded and applied to Mechanical, Electrical and even Chemical engineering practices, The best learning is by doing, experimenting and by applying directly stuff learned.

[@LoneLeagle]

I've been stuck in tutorial hell watching many paid courses on Udemy, TeamTreeHouse & many more sites for too long. Learning the code syntax was fairly easy after I learned the concepts months ago, but my biggest struggle has been choosing a tech stack. Also, the more I learn, the more I realize that it doesn't take a 30-40-70+ hour course to teach the fundamentals. I'm getting unstuck from tutorial hell today.

[@datboi1861]

Did you do it?

[@LoneLeagle]

@@datboi1861 I wanna use a no code tool that lets me export the code for my frontend. PostgreSQL for my database. Main part I'm stuck on choosing is a server side framework. I wanna start with Express JS, but it's difficult tryna figure out how to connect a SQL database to Express without using a ORM because the whole Node community seems to be pushing the MERN stack with a ORM. I prefer raw SQL instead of all this new shiny stuff like ORM.

[@beratsalija8888]

Maybe this is a late reply but there are tools for that as well, you can check the npm package 'postgres' if raw queries is all you need without the headache of setting up and managing connections

[@LoneLeagle]

@@beratsalija8888 I'm currently comparing Node JS frameworks that already have the file structure & everything laid out. I was gonna just use Django, but IDK if Python is fast enough for big real time apps. I might just learn react until I decide on which backend to use.

[@Manan_K]

The fact that I'm reading Tutorials while listening to this in the background 💀 Thanks for opening my eyes!

[@jorgeortiz41395]

Thanks Theo, this is the wake up call I needed.

[@SupreetSinghsuppi]

Oh my god. I needed to hear this. Thanks man.

[@artyhedgehog]

I've watched plenty of tutorials about I don't need to know that much, but rather need to practice. But I haven't put that in practice... I probably need a tutorial on how to put those tutorials in practice.

[@pastuh]

At this moment there is 2 reasons why I watch tutorials.. 1: Looking at coding style and if need improvements from my side 2: Looking if modern tools/features is used

[@Shri]

Absolutely perfect. Thanks!

[@bereketassefa9331]

what a coincidence i was so done watching a 30 hour angular tutorial minutes before recommended from our apparent ship and sadly i almost watch half of it like a movie

[@stayhappygaming]

key takeaway (so you dont need to watch the whole vid): 1. understand comfort vs grow mindset (tutorial make you comfort, build make you grow) 2. its normal to feel dumb everyday as software engineer (remember to grow, not to comfort)

[@aungkhantbwaralexander1541]

This is what we really need to hear! Thanks.

[@Chris-gz4ie]

Thank you I needed this

[@Stormface16]

As a beginner in React, i can also add one more important thing. In an environment like web development with all those new frameworks and conventions being reworked, migrated and what not, also many tutorials are simply outdated by the time of you watching it. Getting to know the concepts, learning the functionality and as you said applying thing in your own project is the single best way to learn. However, what is really really hard for beginner React devs (because I am one) is learning how it's done right(ish). Basically nobody will tell you what production grade code looks and you have to really struggle, rework your code over and over again until you have something even close to decent. Would be great if you could showcase some more best practices or concepts on "production" code (snipets). This makes stuff a lot easier for newcomers in my opinion.

[@ilearncode7365]

Ive never used “usememo”, “usereducer”, used a state manager, or made a custom hook because I only learn things when I run into a natural problem and google solutions. For example, learning about context when you inevitably run into prop drilling hell, but there is no equivalent to that situation for many other features and techs, and thats a problem that causes people to just watch tutorials for the sake of learning about what things tvey dont know.

[@jjrise]

It’s funny because I normally don’t watch videos like this (just personality differences). But I keep watching because I really value your opinions and experiences. So for that, thank you and keep it up! The KZbin algorithm knows better than me apparently;).

[@lexsemenenko7044]

❤ yessss to the topic explanation

[@kelvinwalter8623]

I didn’t know you skated, my respect for you went through the roof

[@thepeer]

nice talk, its nice to see you give a well put together commentary on this.

[@Unc3]

I teach code. I share your videos often. I'm a meme and an inside joke because of that. Thanks for the content.

[@F4T4LFL4W]

Most important takeaway of this video: unless a job is for a VERY specific role, great companies hire the engineer, not the thing they were told that they know. I have interviewed 100s of senior and principal engineers and can immediately tell if what they are saying is something they learned by working through a real world problem, or if it was learned on Udemy. Someone who can speak eloquently on something simple they truly know and have experience with will beat out someone talking about a complicated topic they know only cursory things about.

[@infisspablo8602]

me sitting in tutorial hell theo uploading video about tutorial hell me happy

[@asiraky]

Possibly the best advice I’ve seen Theo give.

[@kyuss789]

I don't think people coming into development realised what you actually do as a developer, like what a job as a developer actually is. Your job is not to write code, or even be really good at writing code, your job is to solve problems, whatever they might be. No tutorial can teach you how to solve problems, it needs to be learnt, how do you learn?, "Go build shit!" as Theo would say. Companies hire you to solve their problems, and there is no tutorial for their problems.

[@RobertYim]

That's exactly what I'm doing past couple of weeks, spending days watching youtube project turtorial videos.

[@TehGalvanator]

The skating comparison was excellent! But me personally I’d rather spend time perfecting my kick flip than learning the latest framework 😂😂

[@aghileslounis]

I only look for a tutoriel when i want to have an idea about a new thing, then i just go to the doc and go to "get started" section, it's 95% of the time very well done, and you can just start immediately and they do a good job at explaining their API and how it works. But about being successful Theo it has to do with a lot of things, but mainly it's because you are smart, and not anyone can be like that really, understanding complex problems and finding solutions is directly correlated with intelligence, if people love tutoriels it's because they can't go high enough in abstraction to understand the topic, then the youtuber will lower the abstraction and give examples to make it easier for the brain to catch, tutorials make software engineering accessible to anyone in a false and misleading way i believe BUT it can be the reason why you started software development, just like me i was doing physics and completely switched, because i did a Udemy course from someone named Andrei and he made me love React and crafting solutions !

[@kaybaba4159]

the statement at 2:16 is it man, so much connected with that. Thanks!

[@ChrispyChris3]

This is where I'm at except I've been a reader rather than video watcher. I know all sorts of stuff but have a ton of trouble actually implementing it now haha. I am getting better though and I've been programming a lot more lately, so my actual programming knowledge is catching up quicker and quicker to my overall knowledge of the topics.

[@AK-97]

Thank you bro

[@user-uz8js5bm9i]

Thank you for this message!!

[@universecode1101]

True is something that exists, but it is also true that with incredible videos like yours it is difficult, not to get stuck on KZbin. The concept should be, watch the video and put into practice what you have learned, so as to really learn it. Creating projects is always the only way to learn. On my channel I have various tutorials, which they hope will be inspiring, to then create their own version, or a different project. Always go straight to the point Theo 😊👏🏻

[@codybishop7526]

Yeah but even then… when someone explains something to you, it doesn’t stick as well as when you have to figure it out yourself. When you are able to form logic by writing a function that manipulates the DOM on a page, and you came to that conclusion through 30 minutes of trial and error on your own (picking apart each method and rewriting each function over and over until it works)…. That’s when things start to click. For me at least.

[@meltygear5955]

@@codybishop7526 Yep. It's like watching the professor solving an equation, student goes "aha I know when I see this I do that" ... and then the student realizes they actually didn't knew #$% lol

[@MadisonKanna]

Wish I saw this way earlier in my career. Such a great vid.

[@diegomedina2359]

you are absolutely right!

[@dwayneneckles]

I've tried to build on my own for ten years with various front end libraries and never been able to pick up tech outside of the core techs and successful at it. Tutorial hell is true but something has to be said about the mindset to have when building out its projects.

[@pedrojunior4516]

If watching something would make you an expert, football fans would know more than the coaches!!! Love your videos man!!!

[@georgiyiakunenko]

Switch Lazer was 🔥❤️

[@ryanquinn1257]

I was taught very early on to not try to learn everything. Try to know where to learn everything. I like treating tutorials on something that isn’t helping solve a specific problem i am trying to solve atm as podcasts in the background. I use them to get an idea of strengths, weaknesses, and pitfalls of new technologies. At heart I’m an engineer though. I want to use tools to build real world technologies. Not live in theory land. That’s for academia haha.

[@semyaza555]

3:57 I feel like recruiters have helped nurture this idea because it makes their job easier.

[@sky_kryst]

Realised I’ve had the wrong concept of tutorial hell all along. I thought it was watching tutorials before anything else to learn a technology. I still standby the technique. Watch a tutorial( for the technology you want to learn because you want to build something) to know enough to start a project. Start the project then refer the docs if you get stuck. Theo: Even I don’t know all of React Me: Oh ya!? Why don’t you tell that to the interviewer who kept asking me how do you optimise a scroll view (RN) furthermore even after I told him flatlist, pagination and memoize single components?

[@ciaaie8215]

Thank you 🎉🎉🎉

[@ekekw930]

Damn you're really good at skating!

[@DiegoWalisson]

This video, this small 8-minute video, can change lives. Very good!

[@kishoreandra]

Great one Theo 🙌

[@SammyOmari254]

I think striking a balance between tutorials and maybe documentation is very important we cant just bash tutorials as being bad way of learning, this tutorials help us especially as beginners in building some confidence when u see things working and atleast u feel like ur communicating with the person teaching in the tutorials as beginners i think video tutorials are good bt u need to supplement it with documentation, projects and collaboration

[@italiener82]

Knowledge is only useful when it's applied, that's the only way we can retain information. There's too much to learn, it's impossible to take it all in. It's important that you know that things exist, why and what they do and if they can be useful for you; next, you start experimenting, failing and researching until you get good at it; learn more and build on top of what you already know. You will never stop learning, in this field, in life in general.

[@neoshenlong]

This applies to a lot of things in life and I think the problem is our personal relationship with mistakes. Our education system is designed to make us anxious about errors. If you make enough mistakes, you will fail assignatures and there will be consequences. So, we shape our mind into needing security before acting or simply cheat in order to be successful. Reshaping this mindset and understanding that doing things wrong is a necessary part of the learning and growth process is the key to allow yourself to learn many, many things.

[@parkourbee2]

"You don't know what you need to know until you build what you want to build."

[@FourTwentyMagic]

Still believe that the fastest way to learn programming is to pick something you want to build that is so hard that no matter how much you learn you will never know enough to fully build it.

[@RidwanSetiawanOfficial]

thank you, i need this

[@ngamsomset]

according to what you said. Maybe this is the reason why the big tech company are not focus on those frameworks or languages but instead DS and AL. Problem-solving skill might be more important than those frameworks and languages which any good engineers can pick up easily.

[@arianj2863]

Think the classroom analogy is not entirely correct, its more like having a friend that shows you a bit about skateboarding, but i agree, at some point you gotta step on that piece of wheeled wood

[@ehza]

Thank you!

[@daest07]

“I should be a fun thing you do in your free time”. - Theo

[@aliusbosas4415]

I'm so glad I'm found you!

[@benyamin4634]

dude wow 😂😂😂😂 i should see this one everyday.

[@siemen_subbaiah]

I watch some tutorials just to see how a piece of functionality has been approached/ just to see the code pattern

[@zombiefacesupreme]

Why you gotta call me out like this, Theo!? (Thanks)

[@last.journey]

I don't like to watch someone doing stuff that i know "i think i know it" for 3 hours instead i try it my self the problem is it works as i think how it is working but not the way it should really work like when i tried to make a todo list app with js by myself it was a piece of garbage but it was looking better than most of the basic todos out there Really your code and your skill remains the same after you make something new with yourself

[@jarredsumner5983]

I agree with this so much

[@christiangrace5322]

From someone that doesn't have any coding experience, would you recommend them going through coding courses?

[@ibrahimhafez7750]

My problem is that I'm afraid of bad practices, Im afraid of writing spagetti code, so whenever I need to write an react, rtk query authentication feature lets say, I always follow and code along with someone whom i trust, I literally deeply understand 100% of what I wrote, but a year passed and still don't have the balls to start my own project and write my own code. Sad

[@ibrahimhafez7750]

@@switchdiagram I did read this and want to thank you so much

[@niksatan]

Dude thx, this video helped me a lot

[@LazyShady]

Damn..i needed to hear this

[@koRioN555]

Great video. Thank you

[@sushieatingcobra]

Thanks vro!!!!!!!!😍

[@GreyShadowUchiha]

shoutouts to thenewboston getting me through my college java years omg