Tried to learn Python from YouTube tutorials for 3 weeks straight...

I spent 3 weeks watching beginner Python tutorials on YouTube and felt like I knew nothing. Then I sat down and tried to write a simple calculator program from scratch without looking anything up. Turns out I couldn't even remember how to print a variable without checking my notes. It hit me that watching is way different than doing. I wasted time watching 15 hours of videos when I should've been just writing bad code from day one. Has anyone else dealt with feeling stuck after following too many tutorials?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia_singh2428d agoMost Upvoted

Buddy of mine binge watched like 40 hours of JavaScript tutorials and then spent a whole weekend trying to make a button change color on click and almost threw his laptop out the window. Real learning started when he rage quit tutorials and just googled his way through building a dumb to-do list app.

ericschmidt28d ago

Oh man, that calculator story hit way too close to home. I did the exact same thing with HTML and CSS. Watched like 20 hours of videos and then sat down to build a simple webpage and couldn't even remember how to center a div. What nobody tells you is that tutorials give you this fake sense of learning because you're following along with someone who already knows what they're doing. You're basically just copying their keystrokes without actually building any of your own mental muscle memory. The real learning happens when you stare at a blank screen and have to fight through the frustration of googling every single thing. And honestly even now I still have to look stuff up constantly, that's just how coding works for normal people.