A response to a recent video I made about people who are constantly doing tutorials instead of getting jobs.
If you’d like to see the first installment, click here, but in the spirit of ‘doing‘ we’re moving on! Sometimes we over prepare, guys, it happens. You’re so focused on making a big splash right outta the gate. You don’t want to be blindsided by anything and look like you don’t know what you’re talking about or look like a noob, so you prepare -you take tutorials and then you start thinking to yourself, ‘what if this happens? what if that happens?’ and you start doing more tutorials to be prepared for those things and before you know it, the fear of failure has you stuck. Instead of coming out of the gate; swinging, the gate flings open and you stand there paralyzed, not daring to move.
“It’s just fear: you don’t want to get into it… Just jump into it! Trust me, you’ll learn so much more by just jumping into a gig. Once you have your foundations down, do one or two tutorials and then do a gig and figure out how to get it done as you go. That’s how I did it, that’s how all developers started out.”
The VLOG goes into better detail, including the first full-stack gig that Stef took with no prior knowledge of it. Check out our courses (links below), if you’re interested – they are amazing – and remember, <I’m plagiarizing> A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Or think of the immortal words of Shia LaBoeuf and, “just DO it!!!!!” -Enjoy!
Spending all your time doing code tutorials, is not going to get you to developer-land quickly. You need to get on with it, and start building real projects!
In life there are two different approaches to situations that people generally take. There are ‘preppers’ and there are ‘doers’…and no doubt you’ve come across this in many parts of your life and you’ve chosen to be one or the other, to varying degrees of success, I’m sure, but let’s talk about prepping vs. doing in the context being a coder, programmer, dev, etc, etc.
Be warned there are shameless promos ahead… Now we want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with a certain amount of prep; no one is saying that you should charge head first into the mouth of the beast(as bad-ass as something like that would figuratively be), without knowing what kind of a beast it is, do I have an appropriate weapon? Is there a healer present if things go bad? Prep like that is perfect for most situations (and a good indicator that I’m playing too much DnD), but too much prep: i.e. – what is the optimal whether pattern to attack the beast? Is it best to attack on an empty stomach? Only serves to bog you down and ensure that you never get out of the gate to slay that beast…
“They get caught up in tutorials…the perpetual tutorial doer rather than the project builder… What you’re going to learn…they only real way that you’re going to get good at software development is to actually build projects.” For example in the courses we offer (there it is), we teach the foundations first and foremost, some ‘projects’ afterwards: one or two or even three and then we teach you to get out there and get some work done because there is no better teacher than cold and indifferent ‘experience’.
“It’s all about the basics, if you have your basics, then everything else becomes ‘easy’; your level of production just shoots up. …If you really want to learn, don’t spend nearly as much time as the preppers spend prepping: just do it.”
Check out the VLOG for a way more detailed talk about prepping vs. doing and if you’re on the fence about it, please check out our foundations course, it’s worth the look, we promise you. -Enjoy!
