The whole "learn by building" thing might be overrated for beginners

I keep seeing people say just start building something and you'll pick up code as you go. But last month I tried making a simple to-do list app without knowing basic loops and ended up with 200 lines of copy pasted code that broke on the second item. On the other hand my buddy spent 3 weeks on a Python fundamentals course and built the same thing in 2 hours. Is tossing people into projects really the best way or are structured tutorials the safer bet for true beginners? I'm leaning toward the tutorial route after my disaster but wanna hear from others who've gone either way.

2 comments

2 Comments

richardrodriguez9d ago

Man, your to-do list story is basically my life. I tried the "learn by building" approach with a weather app and ended up with a mess of nested if statements that somehow printed the temperature as "undefined" for three days straight. The structured class I took after that saved my sanity, no question.

young.emma10d ago

My buddy tried building a calculator app as his first project and quit programming for 6 months because he got so frustrated. The thing nobody talks about is that "learning by building" only works if you already know enough to recognize when you're making a mistake and how to fix it. Without that baseline, you're just copy-pasting code you don't understand and hoping it works. Structured tutorials at least teach you the vocabulary and logic first, so when you do hit a real problem you can actually Google your way out of it instead of staring at a broken app wondering where the semicolon goes.