[adrianmonk]

How far does it make sense to take this? Take it too far, and all tutorials are bad.

IMHO there needs to be a balance between guided learning and self-directed exploration.

Too little guidance and you can't get your bearings, causing you to get stuck and unable to cross what should be relatively minor hurdles.

Too much guidance (or too little interest exploration) and you end up not really understanding why things are the way they are or what is possible beyond the very narrow range of things you've been taught.

[Jemmeh]

Exactly. And the thing with old computers is they were kind of limited in scope because of hardware limitations. That in itself kind of gave you an idea of where to start because there wasn't much else on there. OP even mentions basically being stuck with QBasic. Now there's an endless field of where you could possibly start at. It's so useful to have some guidance of where to start.

Imo it's also much faster. Yes I can trial and error figure out a way to fix my car, but why would I not use a manual?