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If you like to code along while following a tutorial, then this post is for you.
Coding along with your instructor can be doubting sometimes but it’s important to understand that we don't code along to memorize what the instructor is teaching but rather, to understand it. Here is what I think could help us learning a better way.
The environment.
Some instructors will use online editors like codesandbox or replit as coding environments with boilerplate code already setup. And some courses are so bulky that students find it hard to even get it to work. But the course is already out there and you need to finish hard. The sad thing about it is that some students will give up and the brilliant ones may take longer to finish the course. So if you are an instructor, please test test and test your environment before releasing the course. If you are a student, don’t worry too much about the fancy things and focus on getting the skills. For example, if you are learning JavaScript and you are having issues getting the boilerplate to test your code, no worries at all. Just open your code editor and create a file with .js extension and test your app. Do not stress yourself over doing exactly what the instructor does, sometimes it just doesn't work.
It's not about finishing the course
Trust me, it isn’t about that at all. And don’t get me wrong. Finishing the course is good, very good but understanding what you have learned is even better. So if you took a course and one of the capstone projects was to build a Todo app just be aware that the other 12000 enrolled students did that too. So, whatever project you are working on while you take that course, take it to the next level. If it's a tip calculator app, try to give it a different UI, add some animations or even backend functionalities and most importantly, give it a name. Don't call it a tip calculator.
Practice repetition
Now that you are done with your tutorial or a particular project in the same tutorial, can you rebuild it entirely without referring to the tutorial? Answer that question as soon as you are done. Now let’s assume that you rebuild the project without looking at the tutorial, time it up. Ask yourself how long it took you to rebuild it. Give it a try as many times as you want to. Trust me you are in charge of your journey and these little checks make you realize how much work you need to put in. The questions seem very insignificant but if you ask these to yourself on a daily basis, you will be amazed by how your journey will start to make more sense. You will track how many projects you have built and how long it took you to build them. At the end of the day, it’s important to know that tutorials are here to help us and not get us stuck.
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