Overheard my coworker say "just use w3schools" and it clicked for me

I kept trying to learn Python from these huge textbooks and YouTube series that were 40 hours long. My coworker was teaching himself JavaScript on lunch breaks using just w3schools and random blog posts. He told me "stop trying to master everything, just build something broken and fix it as you go." That changed my whole approach. Has anyone else found a really simple resource that finally made coding click for you?

4 comments

4 Comments

valc911mo agoMost Upvoted

Nah, I got stuck in tutorial hell for months doing that.

cole_flores441mo ago

Tutorial hell is real but w3schools saved me too... it's not perfect but it's simple enough to actually learn from. You just gotta stop treating it like a textbook and start treating it like a cheat sheet. The whole point is to get your hands dirty and break stuff. Once you accept that you'll never know everything, learning gets way easier.

laura_chen411mo ago

Yeah cole_flores44 nailed it with "treat it like a cheat sheet" because that's exactly what it is. I spent way too long trying to read w3schools front to back like a novel and got nowhere. But once I started just skimming for the specific thing I needed at that moment, like "how do I loop through this array again," it all clicked way faster. The real secret is that you don't need to memorize anything, you just need to know where to look it up when you get stuck. That broke me out of tutorial hell faster than any course ever did.

ivan_murphy801mo ago

Honestly I used to be the opposite, I thought you had to learn everything from the ground up before you could even try to build something. I spent months going through Python textbooks and getting nowhere, just feeling dumber every time I closed the book. But that "build something broken and fix it" mindset your coworker mentioned, that's what finally clicked for me too. Tbh I still catch myself wanting to understand every little detail before I start, but I just remind myself that even pro devs google basic stuff all the time. Ngl it feels way less stressful now, like I'm actually making progress instead of just reading about it.