Do you think is do-able, for someone who has spent about 6 months learning to code, to just start reading the documentation of a library/tool/language, and start building along with it? And of course using SO and FCC to ask a lot of questions that might come up in the process.
I am just tired of following tutorials, doing small challenges, etc… For example I want to learn Flutter to see if I can make a little simple App for my phone. There are no “challenges” or code-academy little exercises for Flutter, for example. So it´s either you follow a tutorial or do Udemy courses, or you are on your own.
Well, the fact is I want to be on my own. I am very, very tired of some-body telling me how the stuff works but I have to code just that so I´m not learning to do what I would like to do in that situation. I just see that doing Udemy or Youtube tutorials I am not getting there.
Yes, it’s not just doable, it’s what you should do. You’ll learn faster that way – it’ll be hard, but you have a specific target in mind, and that will give you focus. Flutter’s a good thing to go for I think. It’s very new and you’ll hit a lot of stumbling blocks. But the documentation seems pretty good, Google are pushing it hard at the minute, and it seems to be a very serious competitor to stuff like React Native. There are Slack and Gitter community chatrooms so you should be able to get answers to most things when you’re stuck
I’m not a fan of “learning through tutorials”. I believe in learning by doing.
The issue I have with tutorials is, you get a feeling of “not learning” because your just following along. If you just jump in and try to learn something, and start hitting issues and having problems then good, that means your learning! Failure is the best teacher, because once you over-come it, you learned how to overcome an issue. So if you spend say 2-3 hours trying 20+ different things and figure it out, you will probably remember it better than if you never experienced it because someone “in a tutorial told you to do it that way”. Heck if you try 500 different things to get something to work, that means you learn 500 new things, experience is experience, even if that means falling flat on your face over and over haha.
So yes, go out and try to build something from what you have. Odds are you will struggle and have problems, but that’s to be expected. The key is being able to pick yourself up, and figure it out. Even if it takes multiple tries, each attempt is teaching you something. Failure is not a sign of “not being able to do it”, its an opportunity to learn and overcome.
So jump in, good luck, and yes read the docs, and google your way to victory, you will learn a lot more than if you just follow a tutorial
Nowadays, I am not too keen on doing very long courses or tutorials because I easily lose interest.
I prefer project-first and not tutorial-first.
Decide on a project, build it with what you know, and if you’re stuck,find a tutorial/resource that helps you get unstuck. The tutorial is auxilliary rather than the main driver for your learning.
Though there are times that you do not want to build anything and you have this itch to do tutorials. That’s fine as well. As long as you’re learning, you can shift gears whenever you want.
