--- title: I thought I understood programming. | daily.dev description: A personal account of falling into 'tutorial hell' — spending hundreds of hours watching programming courses without gaining the ability to build... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I thought I understood programming. | daily.dev og:description: A personal account of falling into 'tutorial hell' — spending hundreds of hours watching programming courses without gaining the ability to build... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/y8m2dkCKi.png og:image:alt: I thought I understood programming. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I thought I understood programming. **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 6 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal account of falling into 'tutorial hell' — spending hundreds of hours watching programming courses without gaining the ability to build independently. The author describes the moment of realization that following code and creating code are entirely different skills, and how deliberately building small, broken projects (starting with a to-do list) led to genuine understanding. ChatGPT was used as a Socratic tutor rather than a code generator. The core lesson: tutorials introduce concepts, but real learning only happens through struggling, failing, and rebuilding on your own. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [I Stopped Trying to Learn Everything in Tech — And Started Building Instead](https://daily.dev/posts/i-stopped-trying-to-learn-everything-in-tech-and-started-building-instead-dmvmlezpo) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"I thought I understood programming.","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki"},"datePublished":"2026-07-22T17:22:45.332Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:45:25.288Z","description":"A personal account of falling into 'tutorial hell' — spending hundreds of hours watching programming courses without gaining the ability to build...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/73e7ad491b44ad88b256270619792ba7?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/73e7ad491b44ad88b256270619792ba7?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-thought-i-understood-programming--y8m2dkcki","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"javascript","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"I thought I understood programming."}]} ```