How Every Coding Tutorial Starts Easy and Ends in Tears
The Illusion of Simplicity
Every developer has been there. You are all hyped up to learn a new skill, you find a coding tutorial, and the title promises to teach you a new framework, language, or concept in "10 minutes!" or "5 easy steps!". With excitement, you click, ready to level up your skills. The first few minutes make perfect sense, "Hello, World!" appears as expected, and you're feeling like a genius.
Then, sometime after a few lessons, it gets chaotic.
The "Wait, What?" Moment
The tutorial starts off like a cosy walk in the park. Easy peezy, just like a calm breeze. It explains variables, loops, or basic syntax in a way that makes you feel like you're on top of the world. Wait for it..
Then, suddenly:
The instructor introduces a concept you’ve never heard of but assumes you already know.
Code snippets appear with no explanation.
There’s a mysterious function called
doMagicStuff()that does ALL the work, but they never show how it’s written.The tutorial jumps from "Let’s print this text" to "Now, let's build a full-stack AI-powered blockchain app." Ha! God Abeg!!!
Your confidence crumbles. You pause the video or re-read the article, hoping the missing information will magically appear. It doesn’t. And then that annoying voice at the back of your mind bringing you down saying “YOU CAN NEVER MAKE IT!”.😢
Debugging the Tutorial
At this point, you try to follow along, but your code doesn’t work. You copy-paste exactly what they wrote, yet you encounter errors that weren’t in the tutorial.
The error message makes no sense.
The tutorial's author is using an outdated library.
Your development environment is slightly different, causing a lot of issues.
The instructor casually mentions, "Oh, by the way, install this obscure dependency, or it won’t work." You install it, and it still doesn’t work.
Frustration sets in. You start questioning your career choices. I know I have.
Stack Overflow and the Descent into Madness
Like any sane developer, you turn to Stack Overflow, where you find multiple answers:
A response that’s 10 years old and deprecated and useless.
A cryptic answer that consists of "Just use
xyz.fix()" with no further context. Why even bother??A detailed, promising explanation… that still doesn’t work in your case. God Abeg * 2.
Eventually, you Frankenstein (I really hope you understand what that meant) together a solution from five different sources, none of which fully explain why it works. But it works. And that’s all that matters now. Following the principle of “If code don work, Just comot body!”
The Final Realization
After hours of struggling, you finally reach the tutorial’s end. The app works, well.. sort of. The instructor signs off cheerfully, saying, “Now that you understand the basics, try building your own project!” You sayyyyy?
At this point, your brain is mush and fireflies. Basics?? You feel like you’ve aged fifty years and survived a war. You close your laptop and vow to never code again… until tomorrow, when you do it all over again. Wahala no dey finish!
Why Does This Happen?
Coding tutorials often fall into the trap of:
Oversimplifying the beginning: They make things seem too easy, creating a false sense of security.
Skipping over essential context: Many tutorials assume prior knowledge that the target audience might not have.
Glossing over real-world issues: They don’t prepare you for the fact that real-world coding is messy, with bugs, dependency issues, and configuration nightmares. STORY OF MY LIFE.
Surviving the Tutorial Journey
To avoid tutorial-induced tears, try:
Starting with official docs: They’re often dry but more reliable.
Following multiple sources: One tutorial won’t cover everything, so cross-reference.
Building something small on your own: Reinforce your learning by applying it in a simple project.
Accepting that confusion is normal: Feeling lost is part of the process. Every developer—yes, even senior ones—struggles sometimes.
At the end of the day, every confusing tutorial is just another rite of passage in the tech world. So keep pushing through, laugh at the struggle, maybe cry a little, and know that one day, you might write a tutorial that makes someone else cry. I know I will🌚
If you resonate with this and enjoyed reading it, leave your thoughts in the comments and abeg share so others can enjoy it. Till next week, Ciao!