Ever get the feeling that searching for the appropriate tutorial can be quite challenging? Recently I found out the hard way. It took me 8 searches to find what I was looking for and I am an experienced programmer. What about the beginner? How do they fare when doing Google research?
First thing, to my dismay, was that the code did not work and this is what starts Research Hell or the continuous searching process. Luckily I can improvise some of the time but the beginner programmer won't know how to fill in the blanks for non working code.
I am writing this article now because I recently revisited a tutorial I wrote only 2 years ago and it is now outdated code. It is an AWS Lambda Tutorial based on Node version 12 or 14, I think, and we are now up to Node 18 which does some things differently.
While the intention of the writer may be good, their material becomes outdated or the writer is inexperienced and leaves out important steps. Many people get discouraged and give up because it becomes too difficult to self teach, as they go thru this research hell.
The most important thing is to first check the date on the tutorial. The problem with most research is that it becomes ancient history quickly and writers never take anything down or edit their writings so a ton of mis-information is awaiting the beginner out on Google.
Here are 13 things to watch for when Googling (my platform is windows and BTW it makes a difference when researching how-to topics)
1 things change a lot so stuff becomes deprecated and outdated sometimes within 1 year
check the date of the tutorial and get coroborating material
2 there can be multiple ways of doing something, it can get confusing when comparing tutorials
Example, many ways to do a basic for loop
3 the writer omits one thing because the tutorial is technically correct but incomplete
Frequently AWS tutorials leave out the IAM permissions part, then the code does not work right away without tweeks
4 the tutorial is sometimes downright wrong.
recently I relied on an AWS Cloudfront tutorial that gave me bad advice and I struggled for days to get it right.
5 the article paints with a broad brush thus is not detailed enough
Articles with concepts only and no code example, skip these
6 people sometimes write about dinosaur topics not knowing anything different
Writing as if it is current technology because they are not up to date with their skills.
Example, recently I read that someone was promoting jquery in 2023, not that I am against jquery. It still works and many people still use it but it is now old technology because plain javascript is so up to date now with their native code. In the past we needed jquery to fill in the gaps when plain javascript was not mature enough
7 the writer is obviously inexperienced but the beginner may not know this
8 the tutorial is old school coding..here is where the coroborating material comes in
here is where the code may not work anymore or the platform changed and does not accomodate the old way anymore
9 the tutorial is only for linux and not windows, the inexperienced dev might not know this
10 the reader might not understand the difference between sql and nosql
if it is in json this means it is nosql
11 know the difference between Javascript, Java and Python
example, the boto3 library is only for Python
the Fetch API is for javascript, it replaced jquery ajax and axios back in 2016
12 there is front end coding and back end coding
example php is backend, mysql is backend, Node.js can be both, plain javascript is front end
13 these days we can do without libraries in many cases with plain vanilla javascript
native javascript has come a very long way in recent years. Check out some examples at my website below where I dumped Java in favor of Javascript.
examples of my pet peeves
1 the traditional for loop has morphed into maybe five different ways to do one in 2023. Old ways go out of style. We have foreach, forin, forof, find method, map method. I still like a traditional for loop because it is the easiest to comprehend as a beginner
2 the arrow notation of a javascript function, i hate it because it does not seem intuitive to me and it really drives me crazy
some stuff is time tested so you will be safe learning below
1 plain vanilla javascript using the fetch api
2 plain css for only the basics
3 good ole csv data never goes out of style
4 json is a web standard for nosql data
5 coding from a windows perspective, not Linux if u are a beginner
conclusion
plain vanilla js and json nosql is a good bet for beginner programmers. Then graduate to harder stuff from there.
PS my opinion is that Node.js is too much overhead for the beginner, learn plain vanilla first but still graduate to Node later on because u will need it if u want to use AWS Lambda.
check my website for some tutorials at https://javasqlweb.org
Happy Coding !!
updated to include the term Tutorial Hell. Most of the above challenges create frustration for the beginner programmer. It is out of habit that we Google a topic in order to know something more. Tutorial Hell will never go away entirely, we just need to learn to do our research more carefully.
Top comments (3)
For those who are coming late to this article I am including a revelation in this comment. I found out recently that many AI models get their training data from web scraping Google. So if this is happening and some of the tutorial data found is not working anymore then my conclusion is that by web scraping outdated data the AI model becomes Garbage in / Garbage Out. I am not sure if AI even has any way to understand the quality of its web scrapings. Kind of scary isn't it?
Great advice, Rick! Appreciate you sharing this one. 🙌
Thanks for reading. We hard working Devs don't have it easy. What is alarming is that I am also to blame because some of my old tutorials don't work anymore either. So we must all be vigilant. Now I am also wondering what AI is picking up out there. Kind of scary that stuff gets outdated so quickly.