My cousin told me to skip reading the full docs and just jump into Python tutorials

I figured he knew what he was talking about since he works in IT, but now I'm two weeks in and constantly hitting basic stuff I should have learned upfront, anyone else get burned by bad shortcut advice?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_young1mo ago

Wait, did your cousin actually read the docs himself before telling you to skip them?

amy_foster791mo ago

Have you tried going back to the docs now and just reading the parts that keep tripping you up? I did the same thing when I started learning SQL years ago, skipped the basics to get coding faster. I ended up spending even more time unlearning bad habits and looking up stuff I should have known from the start. Honestly, taking a weekend to skim through the official Python docs and focusing on data types and functions helped me more than a dozen tutorials. Better to pause now and patch those gaps than keep digging a deeper hole.

the_tara6h ago

yeah but i think everyone's missing the real problem here lol. @fiona_young had the right instinct asking about the cousin but nobody followed up on it. the docs aren't even the main issue - it's that your cousin actively told you to skip them and learn from random youtube vids instead. that's just terrible advice from someone who should know better. even if you go back and read the docs now like amy said, you're still gonna have that voice in your head telling you to rush through everything because that's what your cousin told you to do in the first place. honestly i'd be a little annoyed at him for setting you up like that. its one thing to figure out on your own that tutorials are faster for getting started, but its another thing to have someone actually push you away from the official resources.