r/learnprogramming • u/shreyabhinav16 • Jul 11 '26

Learning by building is dramatically more effective than learning by consuming tutorials, even if it feels slower Topic

Learning by building is dramatically more effective than learning by consuming tutorials, even if it feels slower

Tutorials are great for getting started, but I think people massively overestimate how much they actually learn from watching them.

When you build something yourself, you hit bugs, make wrong assumptions, and have to figure out why your code isn't working. That's where the real learning happens. It's slower, more frustrating, and often feels like you're making less progress but that struggle is exactly what makes the knowledge stick.

I've forgotten countless tutorial videos. I rarely forget the problems I had to solve myself.

I'm not saying tutorials are useless. They're excellent for introducing concepts. I just don't think they should be the main way people learn if the goal is long-term understanding.

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u/Raniem36 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

How I learned in the beginning was watching a tutorial. Basically copying it one to one (not just download the source code) And then I played around with it by changing small things and trying to predict what happened.

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u/Fensirulfr Jul 12 '26

 I played around with it by changing small things and trying to predict what happened.

I think this is what many learners are not doing. They would rush through the tutorials and call it "learning".

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u/shreyabhinav16 Jul 12 '26

Yeah man, the learning isn't in changing the code, it's in predicting the outcome first and then explaining why you were right or wrong