That popular 'just build things' advice for beginners misses the real struggle

I keep reading on here that beginners should just start building projects to learn coding, but yesterday I spent 3 hours on a personal project and hit a wall with basic file handling in Python that no quick tutorial could fix. The advice glosses over how frustrating it is when you don't know enough to even ask the right question on a forum. Has anyone else felt like the 'just build' mantra makes you feel behind instead of motivated?

2 comments

2 Comments

paige42712d ago

The "just build" advice is like telling someone to learn swimming by jumping into the deep end. Sure, you'll figure out how to not drown eventually but it's gonna be scary and you'll swallow a lot of water first. The real trick is finding that sweet spot between too easy and too hard. A project that's slightly above your current level is good, one that's miles above just makes you feel stupid. Nobody talks about how to actually pick the right project size either.

henry60412d ago

Wait, isn't jumping into the deep end actually how most people learn to swim though? Like my cousin was terrified of water for years and then his dad just tossed him in and he figured it out in like two days. I get what you're saying about project size for sure, that part makes sense. But sometimes overthinking the "right project" just leads to not building anything at all. I built my first real app by accident just trying to copy a login screen from dribbble, then suddenly I was learning about databases and APIs just to make it actually work lmao. If I had stopped to figure out if it was the perfect difficulty level I never would have started.