Over the past few years the online educational space has grown exponentially. Whether you are looking to learn Java or Ruby, you'll be able to find countless tutorials that will help you understand programming. These types of tools most likely won't turn you into a professional developer by themselves, since achieving a professional level of skill takes years and typically requires you to work on a wide range of real-world projects.

However, tutorials can be a great introduction to programming. In addition to giving step-by-step guides for how to build applications, screencasts are also great for showing you what types of apps a specific language or framework can build. When I'm learning a new language I'll watch a full series of tutorials without even trying to type in the code. I do this so that I can familiarize myself with the capabilities of the language.

One of the weaknesses with tutorials is that it's hard for them to replicate your own environment. For example, if you're working on a Java programming language tutorial from a few years ago, there's a good chance that the instructor will have a different language version than you do. This will cause some confusing bugs, and without any assistance many individuals have quit their programming dreams out of frustration.

But don't let that scare you away from using tutorials. I credit a number of tutorials with helping me teach myself development. And I highly recommend them as a great place to start, especially when you want to learn how to code from scratch.