Overheard a senior dev say "tutorials are training wheels" and it got me thinking

I was grabbing coffee last week and two guys from a dev team were talking at the next table. One said if you only follow tutorials you never learn to actually solve problems. He said most juniors he interviews can follow a React tutorial but freeze when you ask them to build something without hand holding. I've been doing courses for 3 months and honestly that hit home. Has anyone else found that stepping away from guided lessons made things click faster?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jennifer25d ago

My buddy spent like 6 months doing nothing but tutorial after tutorial and still couldn't build a simple to-do app on his own. He finally just started picking random projects and googling his way through them, said it was like someone finally turned the lights on.

ninab9525d ago

That bit about "someone finally turned the lights on" really hit me... what was the first project he actually finished? Like what was the thing that made everything click? Because I've been stuck in that tutorial loop too, watching videos but never building anything that actually works. Did he just pick something really simple and work through it, or did he jump into something crazy that forced him to really learn?