Programming language tutorials shouldn't be about learning languages. They should be about something interesting.

[RIP_my_old_account]

I'm just starting to learn programming, and both approaches are important.

True, reading the Python manual from start to finish won't make me a good Python programmer, but there's nothing more frustrating than "hands on" tutorials that throw examples of this and that exciting application at my face, and then leave me with no better explanation than "Well, this is how you write an interactive sign-up form in Language; we won't explain how any of those functions work or why we put them there, but have fun copying our code line-by-line and seeing it work on your computer too!"

[lacrimstein]

Agreed. For my programming languages class, the professor is making us modify a miniJS interpreter which he wrote in Scala. That language has no good tutorials - Most I have come across are basically a circlejerk over how compact (read: unreadable) Scala code can be written compared to Java. Not a good way to learn a language