7 Ways to Actually Learn Something From Coding Tutorials
By: Jessi Pearcy
Tags: Coding, Technology, Software Engineering, Programming, Learning

How to Get the Most Out of Your Coding Practice

1. Unless you’re a true beginner, avoid big overview-style courses

There are a ton of “complete guide to web development”-type tutorials and those can be great, but if you’re past the point of starting from zero, try to limit signing up for them. They take a whole bunch of time to get set up and usually will teach you a lot of bare basics. Most won’t get to concepts that will push you to learn until you’ve already spent hours coding along without getting much out of it.

2. Focus on tutorials that teach you something you want to use

If you are enticed by an overview set of tutorials like that, look through the included courses or modules and make sure that a significant amount of the course covers topics you’re either unfamiliar with or that you specifically want to practice. Don’t waste time learning how to create a variable for the 18th time. If you’re not learning something from it, skip ahead to the sections that get interesting.

Tip: Think through an idea for a project you’d like to build or a feature on a website you’d like to know how to code. Look for tutorials that will help you build that actual thing.

3. Don’t copy-paste the entire tutorial

The whole point of doing a coding tutorial is so you can practice writing code. If you are just copy-pasting what someone else wrote to see it work, you’re not going to be developing any of the nice muscle memory you get from typing it yourself. Learning a coding language is a lot like learning a spoken language, and you need to get your fingers used to forming the syntax and seeing meaning rise from it.

4. Explore as you go

As you work through each step, when you come across something you haven’t seen before or don’t understand, stop for a second and Google it a bit. In your code or in your own notes, try to write out what the concept is and why it’s used here.

Note: The way the writer of the tutorial explains a given concept may not be the way you need to hear it. That doesn’t mean you’re dumb or even that the instructor is bad! It may just not be the way you need to hear it so it clicks.

5. Interactive coding IDEs are awesome, but learn how to set up your own environment too

I love coding IDEs and have so much respect for learn-to-code platforms that put the work in to make really good ones. They make it easy for anyone to get online and learn the fundamentals of coding without needing to get into the details of setting up a development environment. Some great ones that come to mind are Flatiron School’s Learn.co platform and Codecademy’s integrated lesson/IDE format. I spent a lot of time on both sites when I first dug into learning to code.

What you miss, though, is seeing how to get started on a project without the training wheels of an IDE. It’s highly educational and even gratifying to get something running locally on your machine. You should give it a try! It gets you much closer to understanding how code gets out into the world.

6. If it’s a bad tutorial, stop and find a better one

If you get into a tutorial or coding course and it’s not what you expected, it’s poorly written, or you’re not learning something you’re interested in, leave the course. Don’t waste time typing out code that doesn’t matter to you.

Tip: No one is keeping score. No one’s grading you. Your hiring manager won’t check that you finished every tutorial you ever started. If it’s not right for you, move on!

7. Build something completely new with it

This is the one that trumps all the others. The best way to get the most out of any tutorial is to take whatever you learned and put it into action in a project.

This one will help you develop context for the knowledge you received from the tutorial. You’ll find gaps that you need to fill — the specific way the tutorial implemented a function or UI element might not work once you move it to a different setup. Play with things and get something working!

Tip: Building and playing with ideas I learned from tutorials is when I’ve made the most coding understanding breakthroughs. It will make you think about why something works in the tutorial example and more readily come to your mind when you are presented with real-world problems to solve down the road.