⚠️ Disclaimer I don’t want to gatekeep and tell you what tutorials are worth reading. In fact, I welcome all and every kind of tutorial, keep writing them!
This post is for those who are reading them and feel they’re not progressing. ⚠️
About a year ago I learned about the idea of tutorial purgatory or tutorial hell. I'm confident, I can set you on the right course to escape it.
Completing tutorials feels good. They're a lot shorter than a book, ideal for a daily dose of dopamine.
They're mostly free, further encouraging you to grab them, and it can be hard to stop because there’s the reward when you complete them!
“Finally, I learned how to use Array.map, enough for the day!” - said by no one ever
Why there are so many tutorials?
Tutorials exist for different reasons. Some people write tutorials for a living. They write one every single day. Is it the 20th "Getting started with X", "Learning Y in 10 minutes", or the 100th spin on "Why you should be using Z right now"?
Some people write tutorials only to practice writing.
You don't have to read all the tutorials out there on trivial topics like how to use Array.map, that's ridiculous.
I’m not talking here about tutorials discussing how to integrate different tech or platforms that sometimes indeed need a tutorial because the official docs simply can’t explain the integration with every possible tech out there.
What to do instead?
You can create plenty by following the official documentation.
Most of the libraries you want to work with already have a simple "Getting Started" page:
React 👉 https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html
Others are packed with examples, comprehensive documentation, screencasts, free courses:
TailwindCSS 👉 https://tailwindcss.com/docs
These are free resources. They're up to date, coming from the developers of the library itself. Packed not only with examples but best practices and patterns you should follow.
Conclusion
As a beginner, these pages should be your bread & butter.
The next step is basically just using this tech to build something.
I believe this is just as important as reading up on tech as not even more important.
Remember always build something with the tech you just learned, otherwise, it’ll be just another completed tutorial on your pile of completed tutorials.
Let me know in the comments what was the last thing you’ve learned and what did you build with it?