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My cousin the CS grad said I should skip tutorials and just build stuff, but that feels backward to me

Last week my cousin who just finished a computer science degree told me I'm wasting my time with YouTube tutorials and should just start coding projects from scratch. He said I'll learn more by making mistakes on my own than by following someone else's steps. But I've only been learning for about 3 months and I barely know how to write a loop without looking it up. Is there a middle ground here or am I just making excuses for staying in the comfort zone?
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2 Comments
miabennett
Tutorials are fine but only if you pause them and type everything out yourself instead of copy pasting. Kind of like having training wheels, you still gotta learn to balance on your own eventually.
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jenny_jackson
Huh, @miabennett, do you think typing it out yourself actually sticks better or does it just feel like it does... I've caught myself zoning out and just going through the motions before. Maybe the real test is whether you can do it from memory the next day.
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