5 TIPS to Avoid Tutorial Hell For Beginners

uh i had a lot of self-doubt like first of all i didn't know where to start and i didn't know what i'm learning was worthwhile i didn't know if i was learning the right way i had a lot of self-doubt and had a lot of anxiety because if you clicked on this video you're probably learning programming or thinking about learning programming and self-teaching coding is really hard uh this is hard stuff i also was stuck in the tutorial hell a lot and i felt like i really haven't learned anything i didn't know if i was good enough to get a job it was frustrating and it gave me a lot of anxiety while i was just watching tutorials in this video we're going to talk about how to get over that hi everyone my name is sejo i'm a software engineer based in chicago in this channel we learn programming talk about career tips so that we can learn and make money and be happier i usually talk about the content right away after intro but i feel like i need to introduce myself a little more to talk about this specific topic so i've been a software engineer for a few years now before immigrating to the united states i actually born and raised in south korea i also i was a salesman there i wasn't soft engineer when i was working at groupon as a salesman i decided to get into tech as a software engineer and and started to self-teaching coding there and then after i migrated to the united states i went to community college a really cheap good affordable school and there i actually spent the spent majority of my time learning english and also self-taught programming in english it was very very hard i self-taught programming because after i transferred to university i really wanted to get an internship right away so i really needed to self-teach coding before even before transferring so uh the first point is to changing your mindset to some sort of a builder mindset uh from just learn to learn kind of mindset what i mean by having a builder mindset is that focusing on building the actual prod product or projects that you want to build so think about think about what you want to build first and then choose the courses or language after you really know what you want to build so if you have projects in your mind if you have any like exciting ideas projects in your mind when you're learning materials or watching tutorials you keep thinking like okay how can i how can i implement things uh using these knowledges how how can this knowledge help me building my uh this app or building this little game so that you can actually use the technologies rather than just keep watching tutorials over tutorials and just waste a lot of hours because another thing that i've learned while self teaching coding is that you really don't need to know everything um knowing everything is impossible because there's just so much in the technologies and if you're a beginner you're gonna be wondering like okay like i'm learning django framework or flask or you know react.js or node.js and sometimes you feel like you have to know a lot of stuff know everything every piece of code and what it's doing what it's doing under the hood you really have to remember that no one really knows all the stuff that they're using um so let's talk about some example like for example let's say that you are baking cookies or baking bread or something like that but however it's not like you understand all the chemical reactions it's not like you understand the whole science behind how uh bread is getting you know cooked or made your your focus is more on making bread or cookies whatever you're making and then actually tasting it and sharing with other people but i i think it should be like a similar um when you're beginner like you don't really need to know every single details on like how django works or how react works under the hood if you can just use those tools use those framework libraries whatever you are learning right now if you can just build anything and then you can build things and if other people can use it that's like more than enough uh for for putting that into the portfolio or uh or resume don't get too hung up on something some little portion that you just don't understand even as a real software engineer we don't really understand the every single system we just work on stuff you know figuring out stuff at the same time even when companies are hiring when they require node.js or react.js whatever python flask django or java spring they don't really expect you to know like every single details of how a java spring booth work under the hood actually they expect you to know really little if you're beginner if you're trying to be a junior developer they don't really expect you to know everything when you don't know certain portion when you're doing the tutorials when you are watching some courses i want to say don't be afraid it's completely normal to not to know certain portions especially when you're learning framework because framework most of the times there's a lot of like a magic behind it we call it you know black magic uh there's a lot of magic in framework you know sometimes library as well um but if you know like what what the thing is doing but you don't really know like like fundamentals of it it's okay just focus on using that piece of the thing into your project and just focus on just focus on making things and then just put that on your resume or portfolio website and another thing that i want to talk about is learn how to get motivated so having a builder mindset is important but how do you get motivated to build things so first thing that i did was that i decided to learn html css when i moved to the united states to build a website for my father-in-law's business when i was learning html css uh i was really motivated because i really wanted to build the website for for him and after i built that website he was really happy it was also mobile friendly um he wasn't used to seeing mobile friendly website for some reason so he was really happy about it he talked about his new website with other people that made me think that maybe i'm kind of like you know maybe talented enough to uh do something bigger try to help yourself or try to help other people other friends or other family that you really cared about i think that will give you enough motivation they will give you a lot of motivation because i mean at the end of the day we we learn technologies we learn programming because we it's a good job market is great but at the end of the day we kind of want to help people with that i also made like a mobile application using react js with my friend because of the goal of the app was very specific and then the people who we wanted to help was very specific to my school uh there were actually a lot of users and a lot of friends actually used that application to navigate the career fair find out which companies are coming to the career fair and then you know favorite the career favorite the company make a note rank the companies where they you know want to get hired seeing those ranked ranking it was really fun and exciting think about people that you want to help it will make you keep going because seeing users grow or seeing users actually use that it can really make you happy and it gives you some sort of purposes to learn the programming and keep learning and then another point that i want to make is that accepting the fact that tutorials go bad oh what i mean by tutorials go bad is that there's always new technologies coming up and a lot of libraries framework gets version upgraded so when you are working on when you're watching the tutorials there are kind of older what happens is you type the same exact things as youtubers or instructors are writing and you you click the play button or run button or whatever and it doesn't run so the reason is you might be having a like a wrong java version or wrong python version wrong versions of whatever the libraries and framework that you have when you type the same exact thing and when it doesn't run it really gives you the frustration it makes you really frustrated then you feel like giving up now you feel like maybe this is not not my way but the thing is this is really a normal normal reality like this is our life um when you're working as a developer maybe some things are working on your machine it doesn't work on other people's machine maybe the end-to-end has passed locally but it doesn't pass in integration you know in integration everything seemed fine but it breaks in production so the reasons is that maybe the versions are not correct uh maybe some configurations local configurations integration configurations all those configurations are kind of like a maybe there's some some missing pieces of it um it happens all the time it really happens all the time so accept the fact that tutorials are not perfect even paid courses are not perfect so you kind of have to go to forums or go to stack overflow to find out the answers and that is the programmer's life software engineer's life another point that i want to make is the quantity over quality when watching the tutorials when you're watching tutorials i actually recommend watching tutorials in really fast speed um and watch couple times i think this is kind of like um work well with my first point like having a builder mindset is that you're watching tutorials to actually building you should you should be watching tutorials to build your application ideas not just type the same exact thing as the youtubers are typing because you don't really learn anything the point is just browse through the tutorials or courses and stuff really fast and then try to implement the stuff that you wanted to build you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to like to actually build things perfectly just because you watch tutorials but like just go back to the certain portion just go back to the certain portion and watch it again copy and paste the code and change the code and then you build things even if you don't really deeply understand everything just just move on uh implement different features or implement different things and if you don't know things go back to that specific portion of the uh you know tutorials and watch it again and then build things and watch it again you know um this kind of cycle is really great so you know don't do note taking while watching tutorials just watch tutorials really fast and focus on building things and i think the most important point here is that actually having a builder mindset a lot of a lot of us are so used to some sort of a grading system where we learn things and somebody grade us and then we get the good grade we get the certifications or we get some sort of a like stamp i think that's part of the reason why people stuck in the tutorial hell because they feel like they should like master the skills by just watching or learning or by note-taking you really learn by building things yeah i think yeah i think this is the summary um hopefully this was helpful and if you still have a lot of questions or feeling or if you're currently struggling comment down below i can answer a lot of questions or talk about my experience and stuff like that thank you very much for watching my video and i'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Seho Lim

Views: 75

Keywords: tutorial hell, web development, how to learn programming, how to learn web development, how to avoid tutorials, how to watch tutorials, coding tutorial, how to learn to code, how to learn coding, coding tips, programming tips, what is tutorial hell, programming, coding, how to learn django, python flask, javascript, programming tutorial for beginners, coding tips for beginners, developer roadmap, how to escape tutorial hell, how to get out of tutorial hell, java, python

Id: 2ee-nOFGFkc

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021