Tutorial Hell: The Only Demon You Have to Fight as a Programmer.

What is Tutorial Hell?

Do you recognize this pattern?

You are hyped to learn to program - it's the key to your future.
You get online and search for the best course.
You sit through it and feel like you have learned. You have 3 projects to show, right?
You are given your first independent assignment and suddenly you are blank.
You pick up another tutorial for that...and the cycle continues.

Tutorial hell has been defined in many different ways but my goal is not to offer another definition. I just want to tell you how I understand it. It is simply shooting yourself in the foot and every time you go to the hospital, you are given painkillers and another round of bullets to shoot yourself again. But one thing we don't realize is we become better at shooting ourselves with every hospital visit.

Now, why am I using crazy analogies? Ok, let's talk about the brain for a little bit - no, this isn't a biology blog. It's a programming blog I promise.

A Brief Story About the Brain

You see our brains are our greatest asset yet I argue that they can be our greatest enemy. From the beginning, our brains have been wired to do one thing. And this one it does strive to excel at. To keep us alive. And over your lifetime, it tries to optimize all its processes to do so in the simplest way it can find.

This isn't the only thing though. You see it always encourages you to choose the simplest route because it drugs you. Yes, there - I said it. Your brain drugs you.

Whenever you do something pleasurable, and thrilling and get a sense of accomplishment, your brain releases a small amount of a hormone that we all know well - Dopamine (Now, I am not against Dopamine I will write an article soon about this). And every time you are faced with the same challenge, your body naturally wants to go for the option it got dopamine from the last time.

Why is this biology lesson important for programming?

The Relationship Between Tutorial Hell and Dopamine Addiction

I use the term dopamine addiction lightly in this article. Nonetheless, let us examine the relationship using the example we highlighted at the beginning of this article.

You are excited to learn to program and so you pick up a few YouTube videos, this starts the tutorial spiral. Quickly, your brain gets used to always finding a quick fix to whatever problem you run into during your learning process. You take longer and longer classes as your appetite increases till you realize what you need is that one course or Bootcamp. The one that takes you from zero to hero in one course. A truly wonderful promise and so you buy it. Now you are hooked.

First, you have the pressure because you paid your money and your brain wants a profit on that investment. Then there are the small wins within the course.

Wow, you built your first landing page, then your first app, then your first website. You seem to be making progress. You see, every time you complete one project and look at the work on your hands, you get a dopamine hit such that next time you need to complete a project, you know where to find the dopamine shot. And so this becomes your process.

Presented with a challenge
Look up a tutorial for it (There are 1000+ and new ones every day)
Watch the tutorial, and get your reward
Rinse and repeat.

Why are Programming Tutorials so Damn Attractive?

1. The Creator Built into these tutorials are the creator's need to earn from you (let's be honest, I want to help you become a developer but I also have to put food on the table for my family - do the math), and systems to keep you coming back for more constantly (I need food for today and tomorrow too). So the creator makes sure you have a sense of accomplishment through things like projects, certificates, and rewards. All dopamine activators.

2. The "Know-it-all's" aka Teachers But I wouldn't blame the creators alone. You see, our whole lives, we have grown up with the idea that to learn, we have to go to school. And what happens at school, we sit in a class for several hours to years, and someone who "supposedly knows it all" comes and teaches us about that something. That person tells us what to read, which books to buy, and how to pass his exam - or else, we fail his class. Does this look familiar? It should!!!!

Also, It is just so satisfying to look at a solution to a problem "I have solved" I am a superhero, 1000+ lines of code - wow. See unlike taking the real route, I can do this in a few hours. Why not do this again and again till I am a pro?

So we have the external pressure from marketers and the course creators and we have the internal pressure from our dopamine addiction and our deeply engraved learning process.

We know that we can't learn anything unless some "know it all" with "1000+" years of experience has shown us how to do it. And the content creators know this too. You become an easy target.

Why Tutorial Hell Limits Your Potential

See, I have nothing against tutorials (wink wink, I have something against them) but just a few issues that I believe make them dangerous for us as programmers. And it is this. Tutorial addiction kills the fundamental reason you are paid $200k+ per year - Problem Solving and confidence.

1. Tutorial Hell kills your Problem Solving You aren't paid $200k+ per year to sit in your office and look up solutions to problems your company is facing. A simple python script would have handled that job perfectly.

See at the core of our jobs as developers are the need to be the best or at least good at problem-solving. We look at problems, break them down, develop solutions, present those solutions to the world and help our companies make 100x profits. That is why it is a no-brainer to compensate us so well.

But then comes tutorial hell. Suddenly you can't solve a problem on your own. Every time you are presented with a problem, you quickly run to YouTube to see if you can find any solutions. This doesn't look bad at first and again this goes back to my statement: I don't think tutorials are bad entirely. After all, you get to learn. But in all honesty, there is a ceiling to your knowledge. However much the lecture tells you is all you'll ever know and not even know it well to apply it elsewhere.

So you built a pricing table in the last tutorial and now you need to place the table in a different setting and wait, it has to be dynamically updated based on a lot of other factors unique to your company. Suddenly you are stuck in a pit you can't get out of.

2. Tutorial Hell Kills Your Self-Confidence The more you consume tutorials, the more you lose trust in yourself and your personal ability to solve problems without the help of a tutorial. Now every time you are faced with a challenge, you run straight to a tutorial.

Self-confidence as a programmer is what enables you to present a new and often untested idea as a solution to a problem and end up being right or wrong at times, but that's ok - because it might be the answer for something else. Take an example of the Facebook story.

3. Tutorial Hell Keeps You Stuck as a Follower As a developer, the shorter the time you spend as a follower the better for your job. We have developers whose full-time jobs are wiping away hundreds and thousands of other jobs in a blink.

Tutorial hell trains you to be a follower. Unless someone hasn't done it before, then you can't do it. Try saying that at your next interview and tell me how many offers you get. As a follower, all you'll ever do is mimic what has already been done. and in the eyes of an employer, that isn't valuable. Again simple scripts can perform this job.

We should strive to be industry leaders. Again in the Facebook example; what would have become of Facebook if Mark was stuck searching up tutorials? Facebook would have probably been exactly what Myspace was. Not a very good position to be in considering Myspace no longer exists.

Now I want to suggest a statement then we shall talk about a better path.

"Tutorial hell trains you to be a follower - and if that is your goal, go right ahead with it"

A Better Path to Your Programming Goals

Now I know I have said a lot but I want to end this article by presenting a better path to follow to achieve your programming goals. I am going to keep this section short and direct since my goal isn't for you to get stuck here analyzing the steps I present. I need you to get out there and become awesome.

Get out of tutorial hell The truth is simple.

"If you want to learn how to speak a language, at some point you have to switch off Duolingo, go out into the street, and start interacting with the people in that language."

I got that from an article on the web. But it is so true. Again, I have nothing against tutorials, but they shouldn't be everything. They shouldn't even be your first option. All you have to do is - PRACTICE.

Of course, you a still adjusting so I'll give you steps.

Think of anything that interests you and build something around it. An example is music and AI for me. I would think of music and say I am going to build an app that indexed all my music and sorts it based on themes or moods.

Now, this is a big problem I know. But we are not scared of it, we are developers - we can do anything. So we'll break it down, talk to people, develop smaller problems we can work with, and suddenly the project is achievable.

Don't be fooled, however. Everything will go wrong and that is ok. But don't rush to pick up a video or course. No, not yet. That is step 2.
Look up documentation, read related blogs, and talk to people. Google is your secret weapon. Reading the documentation will not only teach you a lot but it lets your brain act as an explorer instead of a follower. You take the driving seat and have complete control of the direction you want to take. This is how masterpieces are born.
Well I have thought and still failed to come up with an idea. Ok, start contributing to open source projects. Look up those you are interested in and start working on the issues they have. Then repeat step 2.

In short.

"Build stuff, read stuff, work on other people's stuff"

In a year, you'll thank me.

Conclusion

In my conclusion, I want to challenge you.

Look back 365 days or however long it has been since you wanted to learn how to code. And see how far you have come in that time. Now I am inviting you to join me on a 365-day journey. We are going to take 365 days to learn how to code.

Who is this for? Well first it is for beginners but also however far along the journey you are, you still have a long journey ahead of you. So I encourage you to pick a target and aim with us. What is my target? My first front-end developer job in 365 days. What is yours?

See you on the journey.

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