Broken Tutorials

In the past, whenever a novice programmer asked me for tips on how to pick up a new language, I'd give them the same advice I'd been hearing for years. Play with it! There's nothing quite like identifying a project you're interested in doing and then diving in, following online tutorials until you are comfortable enough with the new language to venture off on your own.

However, my recent experience with node.js has shown me that there's an even better technique: Follow *broken* tutorials and struggle through the issues until you've made it work. This excellent tutorial is a bit out of date and requires a bit of tweaking to get running. However, once you've conquered it, victory is that much sweeter and you knowledge of node.js and express is that much deeper because of your struggles.