If you follow a programming tutorial, at the end you will have some working code. You will hopefully have some idea of how it works.

But, you haven’t learned how to make this code. Programming is different from woodworking or playing a guitar in this way, because they require training your hands. Watching and repeating what you see will work to help you learn and improve.

In programming, it’s good to type fast, but most of what is happening when you make new code is in your head, and tutorials don’t train that part.

This is why I think Programming Tutorials Should be Vaguer. Programming is taking a nebulous problem and breaking it down, understanding it, trying to find building blocks, and then building up something that solves the problem.

The final form is concrete, but it is made by going through multiple phases where you took unclear ideas and made them clearer.

We need tutorials that ask more questions and provide fewer answers.