DEV Community

Discussion on: If you could change one thing about learning to code, what would it be?

Collapse
 
cjbrooks12 profile image
Casey Brooks

I felt like there was a plethora of content out there for absolute beginners, and plenty of highly specific/advanced topics, but not nearly as much content for intermediate developers. It felt like a real challenge getting past the "hello world"s of various frameworks into real-world development topics without getting deep into theory and design patterns that aren't necessary for 90% of apps.

You don't need to use the most bleeding-edge technologies and design patterns for the vast majority of projects that a beginning developer would be doing. They serve a great purpose for experienced devs doing professional development, but for beginners/hobbyists, it becomes a real blocker to even getting started.

And on the extreme end of things, it trains developers to just copy-and-paste solutions to get something to work without teaching them why it should be done that way, and as a result, it becomes harder for devs to actually take a step back and think through the problem they are trying to solve.

Collapse
 
laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Funny that you mentioned that. Ali has actually been doing a post series on that.


The idea of getting past those tutorials and copy/paste solutions.

But you're abolsutely right that it's an awkward jump to make. Beyond theory it often requires you to start digging into integration points between various tools. And it's hard for posts, tickets, etc to capture the full array of problems you can encounter since there are so many permutations.

Collapse
 
jasterix profile image
Jasterix

Thanks for sharing!

Collapse
 
murkrage profile image
Mike Ekkel

I agree 100%. Getting out of that 'beginner' mind set was incredibly difficult. You really do get stuck in tutorial hell for a while if you're not careful. It's just... there was no content for me to consume that was intermediate. Now that I am, or rather consider myself, intermediate, I find it tons easier to get up and running in projects but also grasp new more advanced concepts. It's a strange thing to experience because I didn't really "feel" myself go from beginner to intermediate as such, but I can definitely feel myself going from intermediate to advanced.

Collapse
 
cjbrooks12 profile image
Casey Brooks

And continuing on from that, I just want to say that Dev.to has actually been really great in this regard, with a good ratio of beginner to intermediate to advanced topics. There are so many articles I read here and think "wow, I really wish I had read this article several years ago".

Y'all are amazing.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

That's definitely intentional!! Though, with the complexity of the network, it's really hard to know if it's working right.

We know the traffic is going up and to the right, but it can be hard to tell if the real value is being created.

So hearing it is on some level is very motivating. 😄

Collapse
 
zkriszti profile image
Krisztina Závecz

If I had written a comment to this thread, this would have been it... Too much "hello world" and too much "ninja" materia, and barely anything on the middle of the spectrum.
Also I'm struggling to understand how can coding tutorials (even some very good resources) can be video based...