The Most Effective Way to Learn

A developer shares insights on overcoming tutorial hell, emphasizing that the most effective way to learn is to start and build a consistent habit. The article advises against code-along tutorials for beginners and warns that using AI as a tutor can be detrimental for novices, as it may outsource thinking and lead to bad practices.

I assume that every experienced and aspiring developer had been stuck while learning at some point of their journey, at least in my case, I did . I remember the first time I was stuck on tutorial hell, I keep convincing myself that I'll eventually learn if I just follow along. But that didn't work out, so eventually I got stuck for a long time, until I found the most effective way to learn . "Some people learn better through courses, some learn better through building projects, some learn better on the job, some people learn better without AI, some learn better with AI" I read this from a discussion by experienced developers on a discord server that I joined while I was lurking. Since then, I realized that the most effective way to learn is to just start learning . YouTube tutorials, online courses, documentations, books, e-books, blogs. It doesn't actually matter what resource or platform you pick as long as you start and build a consistent habit of learning and expanding your knowledge. As stated above, every developer is not the same when it comes to learning effectively. However, you don't need to try everything that I mentioned, but instead find something that you'll stick with to the end . Joining a community that shares the same interest might also help, even if you are an introvert like me. You don't necessarily need to join the discussion, you can participate in other ways such as reading about what is being discussed or shared within the community. I can't give you a solid advice on how or where to start, though I would encourage you to begin on reading articles and watching YouTube videos that explains the fundamental concepts instead of making you code a tutorial project right away. Code-along tutorials are the gates of tutorial hell and the more you consume these types of media, the deeper you fall into the void. So you have watched some random guy on YouTube code a basic website for portfolio, e-commerce, booking, and other beginner projects. While watching maybe you decided to code along thinking you actually learned how to do it, but after you followed the tutorial, you jump right away to another tutorial which is slightly different from what you previously watched. If you are not able to apply what you learned then congratulations, you are stuck in tutorial hell . But tutorial hell pre-AI is different from tutorial hell nowadays, you can just prompt an AI model like ChatGPT or Claude to teach you and even build projects for you. Come to think of it, prompting an AI to teach you is not that different compared to searching for tutorials on YouTube. With AI, you could even tailor what exactly you want to learn or build, but the learning process is still the same either you learn or you don't. Using AI as a tutor can be a great thing, and in fact, many YouTube channels create tutorial videos on how to make an AI teach you. These tutorials mostly mention about structuring your prompt or configuring rules and skills for the AI to follow. Like I said, AI as a tutor can be a great thing, just not for beginners . AI reflects the user's knowledge so if you feed it garbage, it will spit out garbage. Outsourcing your thinking to AI is also the worst way to use it, this just means letting the AI think for you. You should not treat it as someone experienced or someone with an expertise because most of the time, it would definitely make mistakes or develop a bad practice. Well, it's quite simple actually, just go build something. You might ask yourself, "Where do I start?" and the answer is quite simple as well, anywhere you want. I know this is a confusing advice, and even myself would definitely get lost with how vague the answer is. To make it clear, here's how I got out of it: "Learn how to learn" just means that you should learn the way it's supposed to. While there is no correct definition of how to learn that applies to all, you should find what's the most effective for you and the most important thing is to just lock in and start learning . Well, this was a fun write for my first blog post. I will be writing on my learning progress in the future and share my knowledge and experiences as a self-taught developer. Don't forget to take short breaks, stay hydrated, and lock in TheOdinProject https://www.theodinproject.com/ is a free open source coding curriculum I found last week mainly for web development Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard https://dev.to/theodinproject/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard-11nn by Rachel Moser https://dev.to/rlmoser99 dives deep into the stages of learning to code and how to avoid pitfalls that come with it CheatGPT https://blog.humphd.org/cheatgpt/ by David Humprey https://blog.humphd.org/author/david/ tackles the issues of using AI for learning concepts