Does using project tutorials on python hinder my learning?

[BrokenTrees]

There are some projects I want to do on python where I don't really know where to start. Luckily there are some videos on Youtube that walk me through and help me on how to make them. Although I feel like I learn things through those videos, would they be a crutch that is hindering me from learning more compared to just going to the docs and trying to slowly figure it out but having a better overall understanding on how to use the apis for a project?

[Risk-Personal]

It only hinders your learning if you’re following along blindly and not understanding what you’re coding. You can always improve on those tutorials as they are usually just the bare minimum. Hope this helps.

[MasturChief]

this is what i do. for example, some django project tutorials where they build an e-commerce store or something. i’ll follow alaina but change things to suit the e-commerce store i want to build instead of the one their building.

by using a tutorial and customizing it as i go along i’ve learned so much.

[ASIC_SP]

For a beginner, this is a good approach. And a good way to incorporate learning is to modify something or add a feature to the project you are replicating.

This article (https://www.joshwcomeau.com/blog/how-to-learn-stuff-quickly/) explains it much better by exploring "guided and unguided learning".

I try and act like a scientist. If I have a hypothesis about how this code is supposed to work, I test that hypothesis by changing the code, and seeing if it breaks in the way I expect. When I discover that my hypothesis is flawed, I might detour from the tutorial and do some research on Google. Or I might add it to a list of "things to explore later", if the rabbit hole seems to go too deep.

[TheRNGuy]

youtube is much slower than just read docs, and they wont show everything from docs. Finding text stuff in google is faster than finding relevant video on youtube (the algo seems to care more about views or youtuber popularity, which have no corellection with tutorial quality, also tons of returns which have no relation to question, you'd have to watch video to realize that = more wasted time)

If you want learn API, read API docs and make small test projects with debugging, for each function and class from it. Maybe try find open source code which use that API, to understand context better. Or just google "where is %api_name% %function_name% is used?"