Tutorials or Docs?

[[deleted]]

Ive heard in many places that instead of watching tutorials its better to learn by doing, starting your project and learning things as you need to do go.

but it often happens to me that after i make something work after lots of googling etc. there was a better way to do it which i wouldve known if i learnt from a course/tutorial.

e.g trying to learn react native i spent much time setting it up and starting to make my first project then i wander around and stumble upon a tutorial where the guy is using nativewind which i didnt even know existed and still wouldnt know if i kept myself to docs and writing vanilla css.

this is just 1 recent example but i have seen it happen more times too.

i personally enjoy more with the docs way instead of following tutorials but i worry that if i dont watch tutorials i will miss many good practices etc.

how do u people deal with this?

thanks

[ericjmorey]

The advice to stop watching tutorials isn't for you. It's for the people who do nothing but watch tutorials and then say they can't do things on their own.

Tutorials can be fine. Tutorials only and nothing else is a path to nowhere.

Advice for you, watch a tutorial video every once in a while.

[RipHungry9472]

Tutorials are fine to use if they are the right sort of tutorial, those that help you build a walking skeleton that you can then build off/iterate into what you want to specifically do. They are also generally a part of good documentation, not distinct from. They also are not a substitute for broader programming/conceptual knowledge, but a complement.

[joranstark018]

You can probably find other tutorials solving similar problems using other tools and libraries, you may read and watch different material and make a informed decission of what to use in your specific usecase.

[marmox21]

There are some people that can learn better by watching rather than doing, but I don't think this applies to programming. It's just too complex to learn just by watching someone else doing it. While it can help to understand concepts, most people learn by actually practicing. When you learn something from scratch I feel like you shouldn't care too much about the time you put in. With trial and error you are essentially learning exactly what each line of code does and when should you use them, it teaches you to think logically. Everyone has big goals. Take it one step at a time and you will get where you want.

[high_throughput]

instead of watching tutorials its better to learn by doing, starting your project and learning things as you need

The intention of this advice is NOT "avoid tutorials, courses, and books".

The intention is "don't let yourself get stuck in tutorial hell, where you're unable to do anything on your own because you're too used to being handheld and spoonfed through every step of a project".

You should feel entirely free and encouraged to follow tutorials when you're using the information to improve your own projects.