When Should I Start Building On My Own

How much should I know before starting a project on my own? How much should I know before learning a particular library? Should I just dive in headlong and fill in required knowledge as I go? At what point can I really say I know X (insert library or framework or language in here) ? Just take a cup of peanut and sit back  let us talk about these
These are the questions that have been plaguing me in my (short) journey to software developing. There are just so many conflicting opinions out there. There is the opinion of just starting headlong, but there is the danger of creating some gaps in knowledge - not knowing some fundamental principles that guide that field. On the other hand, trying to know the basics before building can lead to the so called tutorial treadmill where you keep hopping from tutorial to tutorial, never feeling ready.

Taking myself for example, I’d decided to start writing for more than 6 months before I wrote my first post. I just never felt ready, like I had to know more. Or the time I wanted to learn react, I read somewhere that a solid knowledge of JavaScript is best, and so for the next 6 months it was all JavaScript. By the time I finally got around to learning react, I had read so many articles on it (while learning JavaScript, HTML and CSS) I felt like I know it.
So what is the right path? Well, I don’t feel qualified to answer the question. But I do believe that for this (and many other arguments in the programming world), there is no right answer. Nothing is black and white, nothing is absolutely wrong or absolutely right. The best thing is to learn something each day, and most importantly do something with it that isn’t in the tutorial. Find a use case for everything you learn. Don’t keep jumping from tutorials to tutorials, there will always be something one has that the other doesn’t but there is no guarantee you’ll need the knowledge.

Learn the basics, start a small project, complete it. Complete a bigger one. Learn some more, build some more.
Tutorials make us feel fuzzy and warm. It gives us the impression we are learning but we need to solidify the knowledge with something we can truly call ours. Rinse and repeat.
And whenever you’re wondering whether you should proceed to learn something new, make sure you have a project that shows your knowledge of the previous technology, then go for it!

OpinerDan