Chapter 2 · Practice 1 of 4
Work through the official tutorial before third-party courses
Why it matters
Most mature languages and frameworks have an official learning path, written and maintained by the people who know the design best:
| Technology | Official starting point |
|---|---|
| Go | A Tour of Go, then Effective Go and the standard library docs |
| Rust | The Rust Programming Language ("the Rust Book") |
| Python | The official Python tutorial in the Python docs |
| React, Next.js, Django and most frameworks | The "Learn" or "Tutorial" section of their docs |
Official docs are usually current with the latest version, free, and show the idiomatic way to do things. Third-party courses and videos are useful for a different explanation when you are stuck, but they go out of date and sometimes teach habits the community has moved away from.
Do
- Find the official tutorial first, even if a video looks easier
- Use other resources when one explanation does not click
Avoid
- Starting with a random blog post from several versions ago