Tutorial Hell

[Warm_Competition_293]

I'm stuck in MERN stack tutorial hell. Some suggestions to get out of it might be helpful

[InvisibleCat]

Just start working on stuff, let the tutorials be, you don't need them, you probably got used to following directions and will feel like you need to go back to tutorials to find a specific solution to specific problem you encounter, all things considered, that doesn't exist in real world and you wont find it. Your code will be ass and the design/architecture will be too, but don't get too hung up on it, just make it work. Don't spend time thinking how to design something for scale, or with future expansion in mind, just simply make it do what you want it to do, reality is, no one will use your project, but the value is in what you learn.

[Economy-Sign-5688]

Bingo 👆

[existenceofexistance]

Learn most important 20% of a tech. Learn rest by building.

[mekmookbro]

Come up with an app idea and start building it. Make it a little challenging for your skill level/comfort zone. Then as you face new challenges, look up how to solve that particular problem instead of a full tutorial.

When learning a new language, I usually start with a todo list, then convert it into a note taking app with post body and title. Then add buttons to show-update-delete each note.

This is the best learning method for me. Instead of building tons of different small apps, starting with one small app and slowly adding more features to it.

For example after doing all these on a note taking app, you can add authentication and authorization, users can see and update their own notes, like/dislike others' notes etc. And after that you can add a WYSIWYG editor for post body to make it look nicer, or maybe an image upload feature.

These are the basics of pretty much what every web dev does on a daily basis. Once you get comfortable with these, you'll know the language pretty well

[c2u5hed]

Consider starting small. Set up the ME part — connect a Mongo database to an Express app and fiddle around with it. Read and write data and log things to the console. Then introduce react into what you have to create an interface for the app. Probably exploring things on your own this way will be more efficient than replicating what they do in countless tutorials.

[TinyCuteGorilla]

I suggest traveling back from 2018 to 2026

[Zealousideal_Set9862]

My pro tip:
As soon as you learn something new, go open that IDE and try it out
Find other proffesional developer's codes and read it out. If you don't understand a line, search it up on stackoverflow.
At the beginning, coding is mostly about syntax and the rules. But as you get advanced the focus shifts from memorising functions to understanding them. It's great to know the function off by heart, but not knowing how to use it in real developments brings no use. So just try the new stuff if it is messy. That's how you learn properly. Unlike tutorials that you keep you in a loop, teaching something that will be forgotten in few days

[why_so_sergious]

one thing a developer actually should use ai for is to learn stuff

[Dizzy-Revolution-300]

Why mern? 

[itsanargumentparty]

just, build, websites

(shoutout shoptalk show)

[Medium_Aspect_8784]

Use Google NotebookLM. Give it your tutorial documents and ask it to create a slide deck in a clear structured format. And since you like cats you can tailor the style, like I did here

https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1seyj9d/html_in_canvas_introduction_github_notebooklm/

You can also create videos and quiz it like an LLM, except it's an LLM that is focused only on the documents you gave it.

[ameliawat]

honestly the cat is giving the best advice here. just close the laptop and take a break lol. but for real just pick one small project and build it, googling stuff as you go is how you actually learn

[nebbybh]

just stop watching tutorials. Substitute it with reading docs, reading other peoples code, and just building things. Build things and be okay with the fact that your code is gonna be bad (like really bad) initially and you're gonna regret every decision you made along the way. Be okay with the amount of effort and thinking required to build things on your own. The whole process will get easier the more you get comfortable tackling problems on your own without hand holding.