Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

As a noob, I feel this.

The weird thing is that I am very well aware that tutorials only feel good because I see progress, but that progress is empty. I am aware that confronting a personal project really settles that knowledge in, but I still postpone personal projects whenever I think “I don’t really understand what this means, maybe I should just finish that online course and I’ll be ready”.

Also fighting perfection over progress is tough. “This is not the best way of doing it” is constantly in my head when trying to do thing, which is mental space that could be used towards figuring out the next step.

But I finally started, as stupid and useless as it may sound, I’m just making a counter in Java that stores that in a MySQL database.

Why? Idk, I am learning how to connect my program to a DB, the quirks to learn from that, and then I plan on doing this from a browser. I also plan on trying SQLite because MySQL is overkill, and so just by doing this simple thing I learn a bunch of things going down the rabbit hole.

Does anyone need an app with a button that just adds a number to a row? No, but the different aspects of getting that to run with no errors are what’s important to me.

For me the problem really is this: I want or need to do X, and to do that I need to know Y, which is a subset of knowledge domain Z, and I only really have time to learn Y. Sometimes I can get away with learning only Y, but most of the time not spending all that time learning Z means I've only thought I've learned Y, and as soon as something doesn't work as expected, I'm stuck.

What I miss is what I (almost) had in college: the chance to learn in depth not tied to a particular instrumental outcome.

If you find a really good tutorial by programmers who are both excellent teachers and experienced in that particular field, it beats JIT learning on a personal project in one important respect. You get exposure to the One True Way of doing things.

What do I mean? Years ago, I learned to program iOS from the Big Nerd Ranch book. The most important thing I got out of that was learning enough about the Cocoa-Touch framework that I didn't try to fight the framework. You don't get that from JIT learning. How could you?

That said, at the end of the book the authors urged the reader to go and write programs — that that was the only way to learn, after mastering the fundamentals.

A beginner should place his or trust in an expert. The reason is that the big mistake beginners make, not knowing the fundamentals, is convincing themselves way too early that they have now grasped the fundamentals.

I don't think the author and I are at odds. I agree a person can get too comfortable with MOOCs, YouTube courses, etc. But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think.

TFA really only applies to basic new software topics. I'm doing a course in biochemistry right now. It's literally the recording of a course taught at OSU that the professor was extremely generous to make and post on YouTube (thank you, Dr. Ahern!). I'm not sure how I'd ever learn biochemistry without it, seeing as I'm not in college anymore.

It had never occurred to me to wait for a class to teach me something. Just go out and learn it! If there are no references (books, wiki, blog, training resources) it's great fun to go your own way and figure it out from scratch. Usually there are some shoulders to stand on and reading a quick paper is fine well spent, but in every niche area it's best not to spend too long searching for that paper. Just do. Learn along the way.

I suppose in less niche areas it might be better to spend more time finding good tutorials, but even then, we learn much more when we do, not when we listen.