I have been looking in to some online tutorials namely win32,python etc. My main problem is that since i am studying them myself, i don't know how much time i should allot each one of them? or each module within one tutorial? What i mean is, I can finish reading the whole thing in one day but then i would not have learned it properly nor would i have had time to practice the stuff myself. On the other hand,if i keep on studying only one thing for, say 3-4 months, then i would have wasted some of my time which could have been utilized learning other things. What i am looking for is that sweet spot where you don't feel like you are wasting your time in repeating stuff and also you feel that you have learned enough about that particular tutorial. I know some of you will say that you should move forward only when you have completely understood the current module but what if i am stuck on something that need not be of much importance in the practical sense?In that case wouldn't it be wise to move forward and then comeback to the spot and re-learn it,only if needed? So i am asking the guys who have learned one thing or the other from online tutorials that how much time did you give yourself while learning the basics?

I'm 100% self taught programmer (dropout from school at 16) and now working in the field professionally for 9month already got a raise , an exceptional prime and awaiting a promotion in 4 month , now that i'm done with the self bragging i'd like to point that i felt it was necessary to show i had a "sucessfull" self learning experience before i talked about it.

Programming started as a very hobby like interest to wich i dedicated nearly no time , read a bit about C++ here & there and win 32 tutorials , was always confused about all the setting up you had to do and got told to learn by heart. Overall i found i totally wasted my time with all the tutorials i've read and everything worthy i've read i've read in books.

Now i find a use for tutorials , if i want to get the basics in a new language i'll pick up a good tutorial and go from there and eventually pick up a book afterward but it works now ONLY because i'm already a decent programmer , if i started from scratch i'd recommand myself AGAINST the very tutorials i find somewhat decent today.

Now as for a way to allocate time i'd say it's tackling the problem the wrong way. In programming you usually start at a certain (low) level of abstraction and climb up to the high skies... but tutorials don't get you there. Why does it matter? Because the issue isn't one of 1 day or 3month , the issue is that time time to read and understand (for you ,seemingly , 1 day) is fine, but will never get you anywhere if you don't have anything to read past it to solidify what you've learnt.

To get my point across take math as an example wich is very linear at it's beggining: First you learn addition , i guess you could forget how it works , however once you get to multiplication and understand that multiplication is just a chain of additions, how could you ever forget how to add? Programming is about the same , everything highter up in abstraction has the lower level as roots so you don't need to learn the basics forever , understand them and go further IMMEDIATELY , you will not forget them as long as you understand the things further , because those things still depend on the basics.

With that said if you want to get good at programming do understand that once you get into books you will realise that there is quite a lot more to learn than the glimpse you've got from a few tutorials , however if you can afford them i still suggest you take that path as you will learn (from my experience) much more in the same amount of time.

thanks for the reply ranakor,

so to sum up, what you are saying is, I should focus more on books rather than tutorials?

Well I already know some JAVA and C/Cpp which i have learned in school through books only.Now i am looking to learn the stuff which was not taught in school to me.I have a basic idea of OOP and other similar programming practices.So its not like i am starting right from scratch.

Quote: Original post by vrd
thanks for the reply ranakor,

so to sum up, what you are saying is, I should focus more on books rather than tutorials?

Well I already know some JAVA and C/Cpp which i have learned in school through books only.Now i am looking to learn the stuff which was not taught in school to me.I have a basic idea of OOP and other similar programming practices.So its not like i am starting right from scratch.

IMO, there are a lot of poorly written tutorials out there. Along with that, there are many different learning styles, and most tutorials cater to a specific style.

I've always felt the best way to make sure you understand a concept is to be able to a)duplicate it on your own, through the application of the concept (writing a program that uses what the tutorial was about), and b)spit out that information into a coherent form for the next generation.

It may seem somewhat time-intensive, if you're worried about spending too much time on one topic before moving on this may not seem like a good approach. However, I would say that solidly learning a topic the first time will take less time than relearning it later, and by writing tutorials of your own afterward you will have something to show for it.

If you want to know if you can move on from a tutorial, try testing yourself. I used to try to expand the tutorial in some way or re-organise the code in a significant way (putting it into classes, for example).

Tutorials have a nasty habit of being code dumps rather than something that develops concepts. Because of this, the code used is one of the few things you can latch on to. The result is people tend to think "I can't code this from memory, so I must not know it".

Being able to explain something to someone else is a good way to be sure you know it yourself. But I don't agree with the idea of writing tutorials on everything once you feel comfortable. The web is full of a unspectacular tutorials on all the common things, unless you're actually skilled at writing teaching all you're going to do is make the excellent resources harder to find.

Quote: Original post by vrd
thanks for the reply ranakor,

so to sum up, what you are saying is, I should focus more on books rather than tutorials?

Well I already know some JAVA and C/Cpp which i have learned in school through books only.Now i am looking to learn the stuff which was not taught in school to me.I have a basic idea of OOP and other similar programming practices.So its not like i am starting right from scratch.

What i was saying is that , you will not find a whole lot of tutorials that can match the good books in contents , and contents if what you're lacking.

If you imagine programming as a virtual ladder of 1000 steps to climb and that it is a linear path with step 2 requiring perfect knowledge of step 1 to be understood (i'm exagerating there) then a set of tutorial going to step 5 will never make things well fixed in your brain, however a book going to step 1000 will because you will not even be able to read past if you don't get what is before , and the things on wich you probably struggle throught now are only the start of a good book , hence if you had such a book you could just read untill you stop understanding what you read (not stoping wondering if you have spent enought time before , as long as you understand , it's ok) and then as soon as it becomes kinda muddy , you could go back as far as needed to get back in the clear and go back to reading.

Note that unless you pick good books you will be exposed to the same issues as bad books will be like bad tutorials , however books at least get quite a lot of reviews and get you far enought to make the basics stable in your head. If you feel like taking the C# road i'd be most glad to suggest a few books i've found really good.

I don't think its a good idea to just go around and blindly "do tutorials" to "learn." I think its better to set a goal for yourself - "make a tetris clone" and then when you come across something you don't understand how to accomplish, use books, the internet, and tutorials to help you solve the problem.

If you are learning the basic basics, it might be helpful to do a couple basic intro tutorials for C++ or whatever language you are using. Then start with simple goals - "guess the number" games, and move from there.

I eschew tutorials completely. They are too frequently written by people who either A) were learning the system they are writing about *as* they were writing about it, or B) wrote the tutorial only shortly after learning about the system. At best, they fail to demonstrate the full range of proper use, showing only a basic form of use that is often not appropriate in all cases. At worst, they are downright factually inaccurate.

I had a graphics programming class in college where we were tasked with writing a basic software rasterizer. The professor suggested we look up the rotation matrix online, which everyone did. I eventually had to run a tutoring session to walk everyone through deriving the rotation matrix, because every tutorial everyone had found had been wrong.

Official product reference documentation is my only choice. Want to know the semantics of C#'s try/catch/finally blocks? Read the language specification and find out the final answer to the subject. Want to know the full range of parameters to glEnable? Look it up in the OpenGL spec, and at the same time you might stumble on possible errors it can generate. You're risking too much misinformation looking it up in a tutorial somewhere.

I agree with capn_midnight.

I prefer to learn from book, and make sure that the author know what they are talking about from their background, and check for comments from amazon and other book review sites.

But tutorial still have it places - usually to learn about something specific.

For example I would learn C/C++ or Python from books, but I would learn how to append data into .exe to make demos (oldskoll dos days) from tutorials.

I finished a tutorial in short time, as usually I study it to learn certain bit and pieces.