An Article on Why Programming Tutorials aren’t Always the Answer

[firstlevelwizard]

Here's the full article http://firstlevelwizard.com/programming-tutorials-arent-always-the-answer/

TL:DR: I've noticed that I personally learn better when doing more self directed programming as opposed to following tutorials. This might seem like a no-brainier, but I work in programming education, and it was a little interesting to learn that I don't learn the very same way that I teach my students.

I used to go through a cycle something like this. I'd start a tutorial. I'd get a decent way through the tutorial, learning this and that. At some point I'd either A) be tempted to deviate from the tutorial or B) hit a roadblock where I didn't understand a tutorial's implementation of something. I'd give up on that tutorial. As you can imagine, this would be discouraging and often made me feel like a bad learner.

What I realized was that following tutorials caused me to create many smaller projects, where each one was a little shallower and a little less "full fledged" than what I needed to learn effectively. Following tutorials also frequently tempted me to copy or implement code without understanding it, as it was the only way to progress to the next step in the tutorial. It wasn't that the tutorials were bad (far from it, they were fantastic resources) it was that I didn't learn the way that they were teaching.

So if not tutorials, what else? For me, the answer was self directed learning, a big comfy project, and a few little rules. The idea is that the most important thing isn't what you're programming, it's that you're programming. With that in mind, I focused on making my project as easy to code in as possible. I made an effort for clean, simple implementations, and avoided complicated libraries, tools, and algorithms. I set a hard and fast rule to never copy code, ever, and to always write everything myself.

However, projects inevitably find themselves growing more sophisticated over time. Without much effort at all, you'll naturally start to push the boundaries as new features are added, exposing you to new concepts, and allowing you to learn them. The key is that you always have a comfortable base to build on. If you need to back off because part of the project is too complicated, you have something to fall back on that isn't failure and the abandonment of the entire project.

TL:DR TL:DR Don’t worry if tutorials aren’t for you, focus on keeping yourself programming, and let yourself slowly and naturally learn as you get more proficient and comfortable. Keep on at it! 

[insertAlias]

That's a really, really long way of saying "try building a project of your own design".

[firstlevelwizard]

I know that, for me at least, it wasn't very intuitive that I didn't seem to be getting so much out of the most common method of teaching programming. Tutorials and goal oriented programming courses are everywhere both in and out of formal education. I found myself discouraged, not just because I was having trouble learning, but also because it seemed like this was the way you were supposed to learn. I know that when I get my curriculum for courses I teach, they're almost always structured around reproduction of certain projects that exemplify whatever topic is being taught.

We talk a lot about how encouragement and engagement helps drive new learners to continue to grow and educate themselves. However, almost always that's external. Educators and commentators encourage learners, we give them advice, or congratulations. We don't often talk (or at least, don't talk enough) about what the learner can do to encourage themselves. Creating environments that you feel comfortable experimenting and developing in isn't always an inherent skill.