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Orkhan Farmanli
Orkhan Farmanli

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Be careful when you learn something from a video tutorial

Video tutorials are a great way of learning a new language, framework, library etc. Some people learn better from a video tutorial and some not. This is a personal choice which means we shouldn't always push beginners (like me 😅) to read hundreds of pages of documentation when they are highly motivated to start developing. I remember when I first tried to learn coding, I got a 400+ page C++ book from my coder acquaintance. My motivation almost vanished due to such introduction to programming.

The problem with the video tutorials is they can sometimes teach developers bad practices too. The creators who are eager to gain as quickly as possible don't always research the technology deeply and post the tutorial as soon as possible. You know there are times when you are writing code and feel something is off but you don't know what because you don't have enough experience on the subject. Yeah, I'm talking about those times. And it doesn't matter if the tutorial free or paid.

I've been coding since 2015 and as a self learner I've watched lots of tutorials. What I noticed is, the reviews of the tutorials don't always represent the quality of the content. Most of the time, the reviewers are beginners who don't know a lot about the topic they're learning and they usually ignore wrong doings of the creator. It's because they are thankful that the tutorial exist and it's the best one they can afford or find to improve themselves. Best way to overcome this problem is to discuss with somebody who already know the thing you are learning which would give you a great perspective. You you can research it yourself but it's always a good option to debate with somebody you know. (Writing directly to the creator about the issue in the tutorial is also an option but sometimes it can fire back.)

Latest comments (2)

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jasonlosito profile image
Jason Losito

I think it does not matter if it is video or written tutorial or book.

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orkhanfarmanli profile image
Orkhan Farmanli

Yeah but platforms like YouTube or Udemy makes it easy to spread such content.