Coworking space showed me why video tutorials fail new coders

I spent three days last week at a shared office downtown near the transit hub, helping a friend set up her first small business website. What caught my attention was how many beginners there were watching long video courses on their laptops, pausing every few seconds to copy code. They all seemed stuck, so I asked a few of them what they were learning. One woman said she had watched 40 hours of JavaScript videos but could not build a simple contact form. Another man was on his fifth tutorial about Python loops, still unsure why his script kept failing. I told them to close the videos and just start typing their own tiny projects, using the error messages to guide them. By the end of the second day, the woman had her form working, and the man fixed his loop issue by himself. Am I the only one who thinks tutorials teach too much talking and not enough doing for absolute beginners?

1 comments

1 Comment

masondixon4d ago

40 hours of JavaScript videos and she couldn't build a contact form? That's not a tutorial problem, that's a Netflix subscription with extra steps.