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How I Discovered ‘Pre-Tutorial Hell’ and How You Can Avoid It

Cahue Kokeny on August 05, 2020

So recently I've decided to study Web Development... And like any other motivated self-starter, I dove head-first online and started res...
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Mark Davies

These are great pieces of advice, I especially like "Know your Goal" - programming is all about solving problems and it's easy to get yourself into a state where it's easier to keep watching videos reading blogs instead of actually solving problems.

There is so much to learn in the space - my philosophy has always been "learn enough to solve your current problem", there will always be things that you'll do incorrectly or non-perfectly, just remember that software is by definition soft - it can be changed. Once you've learned a better way of doing something go back into your code and allow yourself to be critical of your mistakes.

Constant learning is good, but don't let it hold you back from solving your problem!!

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Cahue Kokeny

Having personal projects in this line of work is essential. You are probably going to learn way more.

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Mark Davies

I personally don't think it is essential to have a personal project, especially when working as a developer you spend a lot of time programming and whilst it can be fun you really have to know when to take breaks from it, because it can become almost addictive.

For me if I want to learn something I spin up a project and just hammer away until I think I know the concept. Sometimes things that you are learning don't necessarily fit into what your doing, but it's good to have a reference in your mind.

One thing I dislike about the industry is the expectation that developers need to be developing as if it's their only interest. Learn to love other things, i for one think it's okay just to do this as a 9-5 stable job and not have any major interest outside of work. I'm personally not one of those people I actually do development outside of work but it shouldn't be an expectation.

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Canu667

This struck a chord with me. I am precisely in this situation. Multiple courses, tutorials and articles. Everything worth learning, yet nothing really learnt. Procastination at its finest.

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Cahue Kokeny

I limited myself to the amount of content I should save. Now I am finally doing my courses :D

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Daniel Khromov

My teacher asked me to make an iOS app for late students in our school, and I wrote it completely in SwiftUI. Before that I didn't know anything about it, and knew only basics of Swift and UIKit. This app was a great teacher for me! I think the best way to learn any technology is to create a working project, where you solve real problems

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Chrissie

Also fear can play a big role in a situation like that especially for something that seems so daunting like programming if you come from a nontech background. I think the best advice would be to just do it.

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Cahue Kokeny

The first step is indeed the hardest. The trick is to get into a nice pace and just go from there.

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Omicron

hehe, this is so true, i have hundreds of courses in my backlog, that would take several years to complete

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Shannon Crabill

Ahhhh, been here, done that.

It's a blessing and curse that we live in the era of having so much information a few clicks away.

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HawiCaesar

Great tips right here! It can be quite overwhelming. Let's also not forget when there is some new technology you have to learn. Another cycle...only that you have more foresight

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ehmiiz

I can relate so much in this post. Think I have around 250bookmarks about things I already read. Thanks for the wise words in this post.

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Cahue Kokeny

I am glad that my story struck a cord haha. I figure it would be nice to inform people how I got out of this situation :)