Loading…
11
Vent: I copied code from a tutorial for 3 months straight and learned almost nothing
I need to warn every new coder about this because I wasted a whole summer on it. From May to August I sat at my laptop in my mom's kitchen and typed along with YouTube videos, and I felt so productive, like I was really learning. Then my buddy asked me to build him a simple to-do list app, no tutorial, just me, and I froze completely. I couldn't write a single function without pausing the video or googling the exact syntax, which showed me I had memorized typing patterns, not actual coding. The problem is that copying code feels like progress because it always runs on the first try, so you never hit an error you have to figure out yourself. After that embarrassing night I started rewriting each small project from scratch with the video closed, and I broke my code like 20 times, but each fix actually stuck in my brain. So my question is, how do you all balance following guides when you're new versus forcing yourself to struggle through it alone?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
harris.dakota7d ago
Calls it wasting a whole summer, but honestly the typing along part still did something for you, since you learned to read code and spot syntax which is not nothing. Where the real jump happened is when you closed the video and let yourself break stuff, so the fix is to always end every tutorial session by rebuilding one tiny piece from memory with the guide shut. Copy first if you have to, but never let a session end without that one blind rebuild, because that gap is where the learning actually lives.
7