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Nathaniel Mafemba
Nathaniel Mafemba

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A Journey into the wilderness of coding

How is it possible that someone with 3-5 years coding experience under their belt, can be clueless about coding? As much as it may
be shocking, it’s a reality that consistently stares us daily. Diving deep into trying to figure out what causes such a significant deficiency, reveals that it can only be video tutorials.

Online tools such as YouTube, and any paid or free video tutorials are meant to provide one with the head start on how to become a better developer, however, they have unfortunately developed themselves into tools that do both good and serious harm for the developer community.They seem to do more harm than good in terms of improving the skill-sets of developers.

Great artists have always been known to steal, however the exceptional 1% improve upon what they have stolen. Copying and pasting code from video tutorials has left us more vulnerable than if we didn’t even know that the code existed.

Video tutorials seem to be taking away that desire of wanting to grind and learn the basic fundamentals very well, as we are becoming more obsessed with wanting to learn coding at breakneck speed, such that we neglect the process. We can reinvent the teaching methods of how to learn coding, nevertheless, the process will never be made obsolete by time.

The best way to squeeze value from video tutorials is not in the number of tutorials one has paid for, freely downloaded nor watched, it’s in the application of what you have grasped from them, without having to copy and paste every line of code in the tutorials.

Spending countless hours, days, weeks, months and years watching tutorials and reading programming literature without putting into practice the knowledge you have acquired, is just a non-event when it comes to software development. You can only become good when you consistently create products, because perfection of the craft only depends on one’s ability to implement the basic concepts.

Video tutorials used wisely can make one a 10X developer. Furthermore, they also make it easier for anyone to become self-taught and know how to code without necessarily needing to attend a brick and mortar classroom environment.

As a beginner this should be the mentality when one begins their journey, whether self-taught or using video tutorials as a supplement to a brick and mortar coding class. How I wish I could have been better informed when I started my coding journey, maybe I wouldn’t have needed these challenging times to reset myself and have to start learning the basics again.

Trust the Process, nothing beats knowing the basic fundamentals of any programming language. Copying and pasting code without any understanding of the basic fundamentals can only take you as far as you want to believe. Knowing and understanding the basic fundamentals will take you beyond were you think.

Lastly, Cry Cry Cry my beloved numerous hours, days, weeks and months I wasted watching video tutorials without any significant improvement in my coding skills.

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