I'm feeling a bit lost while trying to learn from programming tutorials, and I hope you can help me out. I've completed several projects using YouTube guides, which was straightforward since we built everything from scratch. This method helped me grasp every part of the project and build my skills at my own pace. However, now that I'm tackling more advanced topics like object detection models, I'm struggling when tutorials involve downloading many files with existing code and only making minor changes. It feels like I'm not really learning anything in those scenarios. Here are my specific questions:
1. Is it necessary for me to understand every package and file that's part of a tutorial project?
2. Should I try to recreate these advanced projects from the ground up?
3. What strategies should I adopt to get the most out of these tutorials?
2 Answers
Great questions! It really depends on what you want to achieve. In real-world programming, you often can't understand every detail of every package. What can help is to take a top-down approach by sketching out block diagrams to get a big picture view, then dive into specifics when necessary. You can also try using AI tools to summarize complex code files for you, which can save time!
You don’t need to understand every library or the inner workings of every piece of code to use it effectively. Most libraries come with documentation that explains how to utilize them, which is often enough. It's generally not practical to try and recreate complex libraries from scratch, as they take significant time and effort to develop. Focus on learning to use them instead!
Absolutely! Understanding the documentation and knowing how to implement libraries is a key skill in software development.