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With software becoming more prevalent in our day-to-day lives, many people seek to learn how to code. Whatever the intent is, there is no denying the fact that you will have to do a tutorial to learn a new language or a new technology. When learning anything, a tutorial is very fitting, however, when it comes to programming, there will always be something new to learn.
While a caveat I do want to mention is that, yes, at first when you are learning how to code, these tutorials can be immensely helpful, but once you have built small scale applications or have worked professionally in the industry, the tutorials become less and less helpful towards your growth of being a better developer. Instead, the focus becomes, what can this new piece of technology add to my toolbelt?
Why It’s Bad
Why is this a bad thing? Isn’t constantly learning a positive thing? Well yes, continuously learning is a positive thing, but when it comes to tutorials on new technologies or languages, it might not be the best use of your time. This means you can be stuck in a vicious loop of only working on basic projects instead of progressing your knowledge with more complex problems to solve on a larger scale project.
At the end of the day, all the frameworks and technologies that are coming out are tools for you to solve problems. Tools to help you build robust applications, helpful tooling, or an exciting video game. These technologies are not meant for you to continue building small projects like a to-do list or tic-tac-toe for the 100th time.
How Do I Stop This?
To stop this, it’s quite easy. You just jump into the deep end. Learn by doing is an excellent way to achieve results in the world of software.
I feel like one of the best ways to learn how to use a new technology or tool is to just dive right into a project using said technology or tool. The project doesn’t have to be overly complex, but it should challenge you or it can simply solve a problem that you might be encountering on a day to day that you wish to automate or solve.
The key that I’ve learned over many years of coding is setting an intention when starting a new project regardless of the scale. Is the project to learn a new…
