How I Escaped “Tutorial Hell” & AI dependency (and How You Can Too)

Did you know that a huge number of aspiring developers get stuck in “tutorial hell”? If you’re reading this, maybe you know the feeling: you follow coding tutorials for months, maybe even acing the quizzes, but when you finally sit down to build something from scratch… blank.

That was me a few years ago. I spent six months doing every free coding course under the sun – CS50, FreeCodeCamp, endless YouTube videos – and I still couldn’t build anything on my own.

It was incredibly frustrating. I remember opening up a code editor to create my first project and just staring at it, thinking, “Why is this so hard if I’ve done all the tutorials?” 

I’m Deric, a former finance guy turned self-taught developer. I eventually broke out of tutorial hell, built real projects, and even started my own coding bootcamp that has helped people land tech jobs in 3-6 months.

Our approach is simple: learn by doing. In fact, we guarantee that our students get a job within 3 months of our program or we refund them.

And let me tell you – I’ve seen dozens of beginners (from ex-marketers to former construction workers) go from zero coding skills to employed developers, once they escaped tutorial hell. 

I’m not saying that to brag, but to give you proof that escaping tutorial hell is absolutely possible. If they can do it, you can too.

So in this blog, I want to share how I escaped tutorial hell and the first-principles strategies you can use to do the same.

This isn’t some abstract advice – it’s personal, it’s from my own journey, and it’s the same approach my role models (people like Jason Fried, Naval Ravikant, and Peter Levels) would advocate: practical, hands-on learning over endless theory.

By the end, you’ll have a clear game plan to break free from the loop of tutorials and start building real coding skills. Let’s dive in.

What Exactly Is “Tutorial Hell”? (And Why So Many Get Stuck)

“Tutorial hell” is that vicious cycle where you keep taking tutorial after tutorial without ever feeling ready to build something on your own.

You feel like you’re learning – the instructor’s code makes sense, you can follow along – but the moment you face a blank VS Code window, you panic.

Suddenly, you realize you never truly internalized the skill to create something from scratch. Everything was spoon-fed. Why do so many of us fall into this trap? Let’s break it down from first principles:

Traditional Learning vs. Coding

Most of us grew up with a classroom mindset – sit quietly, listen to lectures, do the assignments, pass the test.

We got used to being taught and then tested. But coding doesn’t work like that. There is no final exam that magically gives you a developer job if you score 90%.

The real “exam” in coding is: Can you build something that works? And the only way to pass that exam is by practicing building, not by memorizing syntax.

In other words, you learn to code by coding – just as you learn to swim by swimming

You can watch 1000 hours of swimming tutorials or coding tutorials, but it won’t make you a swimmer or a programmer until you jump in the water yourself.

As I wrote on my blog during my journey: “1000 hours of watching tutorials will not help you learn to code.” It’s harsh but true.

The Comfort of Tutorials: Tutorials feel safe

They give you structure, they hand-hold you through challenges, and you get that dopamine hit of “I finished a module, yay!”.

It feels like progress. But often it’s an illusion of progress. I was guilty of this myself – I felt great checking off lessons, but I wasn’t applying any of it.

It’s comfortable because someone else is doing the hard thinking for you. The moment that crutch is gone, you realize you never learned to stand on your own.

It’s like always using training wheels on a bike – sure, you can move forward, but take them off and you’ll fall. We need to take the training wheels off as soon as possible.

Fear of Failure and Perfectionism

Another first-principle reason we stay in tutorial hell is fear. Building something from scratch is scary – you might fail, you might realize you don’t actually know how to do it.

Tutorials protect your ego; if the project doesn’t work, well, it was the tutorial’s fault, not yours. Starting your own project removes that safety net.

I’ve been there: I was afraid to deviate from the script because I might “do it wrong.” But one thing I’ve learned (and entrepreneurs like Pieter Levels reiterate) is that doing something – even if it’s not perfect – is way better than doing nothing.

As Pieter Levels famously wrote about his own journey, “By just doing something you position yourself ahead of most people... You’ll figure out what you need to do by exposing yourself to the world... By doing nothing, you figure out exactly nothing.”

In coding, that means if you never write your own code, you’ll learn nothing new. You have to try, screw up, debug, and learn from those bugs. That’s where the real learning happens.

So if you feel seen by any of this – if you’re nodding along because you’ve watched hours of tutorials but still can’t build a project – you are not alone.

This is an extremely common stage. I’d estimate (from my experience mentoring) a majority of beginners hit this wall.

The good news is, it’s a temporary wall. You can absolutely smash through it with the right approach. Let me share how I finally did.

My Story: Six Months in Tutorial Hell (Until I Said “Screw It”)

To make this advice concrete, let me tell you my personal story of escaping tutorial hell. Back in 2019, I was a financial analyst who decided to switch to tech.

I quit my finance job to learn coding full-time – pretty crazy, I know. I threw myself into self-learning: Harvard’s CS50 course, FreeCodeCamp exercises, a bunch of YouTube tutorials.

I was studying 8AM to 8PM every day, literally locking myself in my room just coding along with videos.

For a while, it felt like progress; I was absorbing a ton of information. But after about 6 months, reality hit me in the face. I realized I still “couldn’t build anything from scratch”.

I could follow along and repeat what instructors did, but as soon as I tried to start a simple project on my own, I froze.

All those concepts I thought I knew? They evaporated. I was basically copy-pasting and coding-along without truly understanding how to create. It was one of the most demoralizing periods of my life

I started doubting myself: “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this. Maybe I’m not smart enough to be a programmer.” I even dabbled in other things (UI/UX design, data analytics) whenever coding got tough, basically procrastinating because I was frustrated

Finally, at the brink of giving up, I had an internal breakthrough. I said to myself, “Enough. No more coding along. No more copying solutions. No more watching others code.”

I decided it was do or die for my coding dream. If I was going to actually become a developer, I had to start acting like one. That meant building something without a tutorial guiding me.

So I devised a simple plan (in hindsight, it was very much a first-principles approach to learning):

Pick one tech stack and stick to it

No more jumping between JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc. Tutorial hell made me a bit of a wanderer; I’d hop to a new language or framework whenever I got bored or hit a snag.

That stops now. I chose the JavaScript ecosystem (HTML/CSS + JavaScript, then a JS framework and Node for backend) and committed to it. One set of tools, until I actually build something deployable.

Choose one project to build

Something small but meaningful. At the time, there was a popular Korean drama called “Start Up” where characters built an app called NoonGil (it helped blind people by using image recognition).

I thought, you know what, I’ll try to build a simplified version of that. It was a cool concept that inspired me, and it had a clear goal: take an image, use an object detection API, return a description.

Importantly, it was something I hadn’t seen a step-by-step tutorial for, so I’d truly have to figure it out myself

Figure it out no matter what

Google, read docs, ask for help – basically, be stubborn. If I hit a wall, I wouldn’t immediately run back to the cozy comfort of a step-by-step video.

I’d struggle through like a real dev: search error messages, read documentation, maybe ask on StackOverflow or a Discord community.

This was a pact with myself: no quitting and no immediately switching back to passive learning.

With this plan in place, I got to work. And let me tell you, the first day was rough. I was trying to set up a basic Express server and get an image recognition API working, and nothing was working as expected.

But I kept reminding myself: This is exactly what I signed up for. This confusion is good; it means I’m learning.

Every time I successfully solved a small problem – like figuring out how to send a file to the API, or how to render the output on a web page – it felt amazing.

Those little wins were addictive, way more satisfying than completing a chapter of a tutorial and getting a meaningless certificate. Amazingly, I finished a prototype of that app in a few weeks.

It wasn’t pretty and I definitely wasn’t writing clean code, but it worked! I had built a real, functioning app by myself.

(Full disclosure: I didn’t build my own machine learning model – I used an open-source API for object detection – but wiring it all together was still a big challenge.)

Seeing it almost replicate that fictional app from the show was a huge confidence boost. More importantly, I learned more in those few weeks than in the six months prior.

It hit me that there is no secret sauce to learning to code – no miraculous tutorial I hadn’t found yet. The “secret” was the boring old truth: you have to grind through it and practice.

Just like no one can do your push-ups for you, no tutorial can replace you writing and running the code yourself. From that point on, I fundamentally changed my approach to learning:

I embraced output-based learning. Instead of consuming content endlessly, I made sure I was producing things regularly. I gave myself a challenge to build one small project every month.

It could be anything: a to-do app, a personal blog site, a simple game – whatever kept me interested.

The key was that I had something to show at the end of each month, however basic. Quantity over perfection.

Each project taught me new things and reinforced old concepts. I was finally internalizing knowledge by using it in different contexts.

I stopped rotating between tutorials. Shiny object syndrome had to die. I picked a curriculum and stuck to it, supplementing only when needed.

In my case, I focused on one course and one book for JavaScript, and whenever I encountered a concept I didn’t get, I’d search for specific explanations or ask a mentor, rather than jumping to a whole new course.

No more “ooh, Python looks fun, maybe I’ll try that for a while” – at least not until I achieved my goal in JS. This focus was crucial.

I started seeking mentors and community instead of just prerecorded videos. This is big. In tutorials, you’re in a one-way interaction.

I realized I needed feedback and the ability to ask questions. I connected with a more experienced developer (who later became my co-founder) and also joined a peer learning group I started in my city.

Having a mentor or at least peers to review your code or point out where you’re stuck is invaluable. In fact, one of my top pieces of advice now for new learners is: “Avoid tutorial hell and have a few mentors.”

Even if you don’t have a formal mentor, get involved in a Discord coding server, a subreddit, or a local coding meetup.

When you see others building and you can ask “dumb questions” and get answers, you break out of that isolated loop in your head.

Plus, explaining your problem to someone often makes you understand it better (the classic rubber duck debugging method – sometimes just articulating the issue aloud can spark the solution).

I learned to embrace being stuck as part of the process. Initially, whenever I got stuck, I’d feel awful and incompetent.

Now I see it differently: being stuck means I’m about to learn something new. I adopted a mantra I tell my students: “Struggle is not failure; it’s the tuition you pay for progress.”

Every bug you debug, every error message you painstakingly fix, is like a rep at the gym. It’s making you stronger, even if it feels uncomfortable. This mindset shift was game-changing.

Over time, these changes paid off. I went from a tutorial junkie to a fledgling developer who could actually build things.

The real validation came when I started freelancing and even teaching others. I remember looking back at some of my older code from those first solo projects – it was messy – but I could literally see how much I’d improved since then.

I could spot things I’d do differently now. That’s when I knew I was growing. If you want a reality check for yourself, save some of your early code and revisit it 3-6 months later.

You’ll likely be shocked at how much more clear things are in hindsight – and that feeling is incredible because it tells you “Hey, I’m getting better!” Fast forward: those little projects and freelance gigs eventually snowballed.

I ended up co-founding a peer learning community, then a bootcamp (Sigma School) to teach coding with this hands-on philosophy.

I even interviewed over 100 computer science graduates for hiring at one point, and I was shocked to find that most of them couldn’t code a simple application despite their degrees.

That really confirmed for me: the traditional theoretical approach creates a lot of “tutorial hell” grads too – people who learned to pass exams but not to solve problems. The only way out is practice and building.

The ones I did hire or who succeeded in my program were those who had built stuff on their own, who had proof of work to show. Alright, enough about me – let’s distill this into takeaways you can use.

Five Tactics to Escape Tutorial Hell (Practical Steps)

Now that you know how I stumbled through this, let’s lay out a clear game plan for you to escape tutorial hell.

These are tactical, grounded steps – the same ones I wish someone had told me back when I started, and the same principles I’ve seen in action with many successful self-taught developers:

Shift to Project-Based Learning Immediately

Don’t wait until you “feel ready” to start a project. You become ready by starting. After you learn a new concept or watch a tutorial module, pause and go implement it in a mini-project.

Even if you just learned how to create a simple HTML/CSS page, go make a personal homepage from scratch without peeking at the solution.

If you learned a JavaScript loop, use it to build a tiny game (FizzBuzz, a number guessing game, whatever). The key is to integrate new knowledge by applying it right away.

A good rule of thumb: for every hour you spend watching/reading, spend at least an hour coding on your own. Even early on, 50/50 learning vs doing is a great balance.

Trust me, this is where 95% of beginners fail – they consume for 100 hours and produce nothing. Don’t be that person. Start building small things from day one.

They can be toy programs or fragments of a larger idea. For example, one of my early mini-projects was just creating a “Tweet component” UI because I was learning CSS positioning.

I literally tried to replicate the look of a Twitter tweet card with HTML/CSS. It wasn’t a full app, but it took the abstract concepts from the tutorial and made them concrete on a page I built.

Those little wins add up.

Simplify and Focus: One Stack, One Project at a Time

The tech world is vast and it’s tempting to try a bit of everything. But when you’re stuck in tutorial hell, variety is not your friend – focus is.

Pick one language or stack (ex: JavaScript for web, or Python if you’re into data – whatever excites you) and stick with it for a decent period (several months at least).

This avoids the trap of shallow knowledge in ten different things; instead, you’ll get deeper in one, which actually makes learning the next thing easier later. Along with one stack, pick one main project to be your capstone for that learning phase.

This project should be something you care about – that solves a problem you have or an idea you find cool.

It doesn’t have to be original; it just has to motivate you. The reason is, when you hit tough spots (and you will), having a purpose for the project keeps you going.

For me, it was that NoonGil clone app – I was excited by the idea of helping visually impaired users, so I was determined to make it work.

For you, it might be a personal budget tracker, a simple game, a clone of a favorite app, or a tool to help your family business. Jason Fried (co-founder of Basecamp) often suggests scratching your own itch – solve a problem you actually have.

That ensures you’re invested in the outcome. So focus: one stack, one project. Put on blinders to other shiny tutorials until you finish that.

Embrace “Just-in-Time” Learning

When building your project, you will inevitably hit something you don’t know how to do. This is normal! Now you have context to learn the thing you need.

This is just-in-time learning versus just-in-case learning. Tutorial hell is full of “just in case” learning – you learn features or syntax “in case” you need it someday (and you promptly forget most of it).

Instead, when you are actively building, you pull in new knowledge as you need it. For example, maybe you’re building your project and you realize you need to implement user login, but you have no idea how authentication works.

Perfect! Now go find resources specifically on “how to implement login in XYZ framework” or “authentication basics.” You’ll be amazed how much faster you learn something when your project actually demands it.

And because you immediately apply it to solve your problem, it sticks much better. This way, you’re learning from first principles of necessity: you have a problem (users need to log in), you learn the concept (sessions, JWTs, etc.) to solve it, and then you implement it.

It’s goal-oriented. It turns learning into an active treasure hunt rather than a passive lecture. Plus, using official docs and searching online in this targeted way trains an essential developer skill: research and problem-solving.

Pro tip: try to use official documentation or reputable sources for these answers rather than immediately running back to the comfort of a full tutorial series.

You might find the official docs actually make sense now that you have a specific question in mind. This approach keeps you out of the infinite tutorial loop.

Explain What You’ve Learned (Rubber Duck method)

This one might feel awkward, but it’s surprisingly effective. After you learn a concept, try to explain it in simple terms – either to another person, or literally to a rubber duck on your desk. I’m not kidding.

Developers joke about “rubber duck debugging,” where you explain your code line-by-line to a rubber duck to find a bug. But it works for learning too. Let’s say you just learned about JavaScript closures or Python decorators (or something that twisted your brain a bit).

Pause and teach it back to an imaginary student or your pet or the duck. When I started doing this, I realized how many holes there were in my understanding, which pushed me to fill them.

If you can’t explain it simply, you probably haven’t fully grasped it yet. This technique forces you to confront what you think you know.

Sometimes I’d even write a quick blog post or forum answer to a question about the topic – not because I was an expert, but to solidify my own learning.

As Charlie Munger (famous investor and learning fanatic) would advise, “The best way to learn is to teach.” It’s humbling, but it cements concepts in your mind.

So talk to the duck! You might be surprised at the insights you get.

Get Feedback and Mentorship

I touched on this earlier, but it’s worth its own point. Don’t learn in a vacuum. When you start building, share your code with others.

This could be by pushing your project to GitHub and asking for a review, or joining a community where you can say “Hey, I built this. Any feedback?”

If you know someone experienced, ask them to take a quick look. Critique can be hard to swallow as a newbie (I remember the first time someone commented “this function could be better structured” – I felt a bit defensive).

But it’s incredibly valuable for growth. Even if you don’t have a personal mentor, being active in a community (Discord, Reddit, etc.) can expose you to advice and encouragement.

Also, consider pair programming or working through problems with a peer. When I was learning, I formed a small study group – we would hop on video calls and help each other through bugs or just co-work for accountability.

That social aspect keeps you motivated and breaks the cycle of isolation. If you’re in a bootcamp or school, definitely take advantage of instructors’ office hours or mentorship opportunities instead of struggling 100% alone.

And if you’re truly solo, don’t be afraid to reach out to people on LinkedIn or Twitter who are a bit ahead of you – many developers are happy to give quick pointers to beginners (we all remember what it was like).

In short, mentorship accelerates your escape from tutorial hell by guiding you around common pitfalls and giving you tailored advice. I attribute a lot of my rapid progress to the mentors and peers who helped me.

Remember, asking for help is not weakness; it’s a smart strategy. Lastly, as part of this tactical section, here’s a mindset hack: start viewing tutorials as tools, not crutches. When you do use a tutorial or course, do it actively.

Pause often, experiment with the code, tweak things to see what happens. Don’t just follow along blindly. Treat the tutorial as a guided warm-up, but then quickly move into your own “workout” by building something related.

If the tutorial makes a to-do app, challenge yourself to add a feature to it that wasn’t covered, purely from your own effort.

Turn the tutorial into a springboard for a mini-project. This way, even when you consume educational content, you’re integrating it into your own project, not just theirs.

That mindset shift alone can prevent you from getting stuck in that loop, because you’re always using tutorials in service of your own creations.

The Mindset Shift: From Consumer to Creator

Beyond the practical steps, I want to address the mindset that will ultimately set you free from tutorial hell.

Everything boils down to this: see yourself as a creator, not just a student. In tutorial hell, you’re forever a student, following the curriculum someone else set for you.

To escape, you have to step into the role of creator/problem-solver. This means embracing uncertainty and taking initiative. Here are a few mindset shifts to cultivate:

Allow yourself to fail (publicly if needed)

This is huge. Part of why I stayed in tutorial hell was because I hated feeling incompetent. It’s tough on the ego to write code that doesn’t work, or to build a project that is very basic while seeing others on Twitter building fancy apps.

But you have to make peace with being a beginner. Every expert was once a beginner who wasn’t afraid to look like a fool while learning.

It’s okay if your first project is basically held together with duct tape and StackOverflow snippets – that’s how we all start.

You don’t have to show it to the world if you don’t want, but internally, don’t judge yourself too harshly.

Instead, celebrate that you built something at all! I remember how proud I was of that clunky first app – it was far from perfect, but it was mine, and that felt great.

Measure progress by output, not hours.

It’s easy to say “I studied 5 hours today” as if that’s an accomplishment by itself. But if those 5 hours were just watching videos while half-distracted, it’s not real progress.

Instead, measure things like: I solved 3 coding challenges today, or I built and deployed a simple webpage, or I finally debugged that issue that was blocking me.

Those are concrete wins. Even reading code or troubleshooting a bug for hours counts – it’s effort toward an outcome.

When you start thinking this way, you’ll see momentum build. You might complete a tutorial in half the time because you’re eager to apply it and move on.

Reflect on your growth regularly

I hinted at this earlier: keep a journal or log of what you’ve learned and built. Every week, note down what new things you did or understood.

When you feel stuck or down, flip through it. You’ll often realize you know much more than you did a month ago.

One thing I did was keep some of my early projects even as I got better. Sometimes when I felt “ugh, I’m not improving,” I’d open the old code and cringe – which paradoxically made me smile, because present-me could immediately see how to improve that old code.

That’s proof of growth. It’s hugely motivating. Escaping tutorial hell is not an overnight jump; it’s a gradual climb, so track your steps upward to remind yourself the climb is happening.

Remember your “Why”

Why did you start learning coding in the first place? Was it to land a high-paying job? To build an app you’ve been dreaming of?

To change careers and have more freedom? Whatever your personal motivation, keep it front and center. For me, I wanted to break into tech to have more impact and eventually start my own tech business.

Whenever I got frustrated, I pictured the life I wanted – running a startup, building products, having the freedom to create.

I even eventually hit a point where my coding business was doing well enough that I could relax, but I realized I’m not ready to chill.

I wanted to push further, build a bigger impact, reach a goal of, say, RM100 million/year in revenue, create jobs, innovate with tech – all that drives me to keep coding, keep building.

In the same way, your why can pull you out of ruts. If your dream is to become a game developer, for example, imagine people playing a game you built – that vision can pull you through the tough learning days.

If it’s to get a job and provide for your family, picture that better paycheck or the proud moment you get the offer letter. It might sound a bit fluffy, but it genuinely helps to have that internal motivation fueled.

Before we wrap up, let me address a common question: “How do I know I’ve escaped tutorial hell?” Honestly, the moment you take those training wheels off and start building something without following a script, you’re already climbing out.

But I’d say you’ll feel you’ve escaped when you can approach a brand-new small project and have a systematic way to tackle it: break it into parts, Google things as needed, and piece it together.

You’ll know you’re out when facing an empty repo is exciting instead of terrifying. It doesn’t mean you know everything (you never will!), it just means you’re no longer paralyzed by not having step-by-step instructions.

You’ve become a self-sufficient learner. And that’s an amazing feeling – not only can you build things, but you’ve proven you can learn anything on your own. That confidence compounds.

Conclusion: The Road Ahead

Escaping tutorial hell isn’t easy – but it is simple. It comes down to a simple formula: Build. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

Every developer you admire has gone through this. Even my heroes like Charlie Munger or Naval (though not developers per se) echo the same sentiment in their fields: focus on fundamentals, learn by doing, and keep iterating.

As Naval Ravikant might say, “your rate of learning will determine your rate of success,” and the fastest way to learn is to do meaningful work.

I want you to know that if you’re struggling right now, feeling like you’re banging your head against the wall trying to code, you’re on the right track.

It might not feel like it, but this is the process working. You are building the mental muscles that tutorials alone can’t build.

Every time you break out of a tutorial and write your own code – no matter how small – you are escaping. It’s like pulling yourself out of quicksand one inch at a time.

Keep at it and one day you’ll look back and realize the quicksand is far behind you. To recap, remember these key points:

• You learn to code by coding – no way around it. Use tutorials as support, not a crutch

• Start building small projects as soon as possible. Done is better than perfect.

• Focus on one path long enough to get somewhere. Don’t hop around whenever it gets tough.

• Embrace struggle and bugs as part of learning. Debugging is your teacher.

• Seek help and community – you’re not in this alone, and you’ll progress faster with others.

• Keep the creator mindset – you are not just a student, you are a maker from day one.

If you implement these, I promise you’ll see a transformation. It might be weeks or months, but you’ll suddenly realize, “Hey, I can actually make things now without hand-holding!”

And that is the ticket to wherever you want to go in tech – whether it’s landing that junior developer job or launching your own app. One more bit of encouragement: I nearly gave up when I was in the depths of tutorial hell.

I had those thoughts of “maybe I’m not meant for this.” If I had quit, I would’ve missed out on an incredible journey – switching careers, building multiple startups, teaching others, and achieving a life I genuinely love.

So don’t quit on yourself. You have no idea what opportunities might open up once you get past this initial sticking point. As someone who climbed out of this hole, I’m almost laughing now at how my mind was telling me I couldn’t do it.

Imposter syndrome, frustration, confusion – they’re all just temporary clouds. You can push through. Alright, I hope my story and these tips help you on your own coding journey.

Tutorial hell might feel like a trap, but it’s actually more like a cocoon – if you do the work, you’ll emerge with real skills, ready to build your vision of the future.

So get out there and start coding something today. No matter how small, just start. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is now.

The same goes for coding your own project – start now. Good luck, and happy coding! I’m rooting for you.

If this blog was helpful, please let me know in the comments, and feel free to share your own “tutorial hell” experiences or questions – I’d love to help further.

And if you’re on your coding journey, consider joining our community of learners who support each other – links are in the description. Remember, you’re not alone in this. Let’s escape tutorial hell together.