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Discussion on: Learning from Out-of-date Online Tutorials & Courses?

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mirjam profile image
mirjamuher

I'm actually running into this a lot with my hobby-project. The framework libGDX and the map editor Tiled I use have an active community around it, but are also "older" - so a lot of outdated tutorials have accumulated over the years. Worse, all libGDX discourse seems to have moved to discord; so whenever I'm googling, I find outdated answers.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a solution. My general approach is using bits and pieces of (outdated) tutorials together with whatever up-to-date documentation I can find and cobbling the two together until it works. Plus, now I'm trying myself to write some tutorials on issues I encountered, in the hopes of helping out other newbies like myself.

If you have the energy to, I think it'd be nice to contact the authors and let them know that something is out of date. At a minimum, they can add a disclaimer to their document; or maybe it'll make them want to take a closer loo. In any case, I'm sure they'll appreciate the pointer and the feedback, that their work is still being viewed and used :)

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sidunn profile image
Si Dunn

I appreciate your well-worded and well-considered response and hearing how you cobble together whatever old stuff and new stuff you can find and pound on it until it works. I have been frustrated by numerous tutorials that turn out to be out of date, and this has slowed my learning process when I hit a dead end and can't figure out--or find out--what to do next. I tend to be impatient and just move on to some other tutorial. I should, perhaps, put a stronger focus on one tutorial at a time and try my best, using online sites and tools, plus reaching out to the author(s). Thank you again for your response!