I cancelled all my learning platform subscriptions. Not because learning is bad, but because building beats watching.

Learning platforms sell completion badges, not capability. That green checkmark feels like progress, but can you build without the training wheels? Real learning happens through building, breaking, and fixing—not passive consumption.

Why Platforms Fall Short

Interactive Platforms (Codecademy, freeCodeCamp): You code in sanitized playgrounds—no dependency conflicts, environment setup, or deployment challenges. Real development doesn’t have guard rails.

Video Platforms (Udemy, Pluralsight): Passive watching ≠ learning. You can’t learn to code by watching someone else code, just like you can’t learn to swim by watching diving competitions. Content is often outdated within months.

What Actually Works

1. Build Real Projects Even terrible projects teach more than polished tutorials. That broken todo app you’re embarrassed about taught you more about state management, debugging, and problem-solving than any video course.

2. Official Documentation Framework creators document their tools better than third-party instructors. Modern docs (React, Vue, .NET, AWS) are excellent—comprehensive, up-to-date, and free.

3. GitHub & Open Source Thousands of real-world examples, starter templates, and production codebases. Yes, quality varies—but learning to evaluate code is itself a critical skill.

4. AI Assistants Stuck? Get unstuck in minutes rather than scrolling through 2019 forum posts. Use AI as a rubber duck and rapid-feedback loop.

Real Learning Looks Like

• Breaking things and fixing them
• Reading error messages until they make sense
• Copying code, then understanding why it works
• Shipping something people actually use
• Iterating based on real feedback

The pattern: Do → Fail → Learn → Improve → Repeat.