The Second Layer of Tutorial Hell
Not sure what every individual commentator means when warning about entering the realm of "Tutorial Hell"
If they mean, not doing your own projects and instead just passively watching one YouTube after the next, then I personally did not find that to be a problem. I tried many different tutorials for utter Beginners and even generated a listing of those in my "Links for Python Noobs" page (here). Just because you're jumping around and sampling different beginner tutorials doesn't mean you are stuck in some sort of purgatory.
But heck. I no longer qualify as an utter Beginner, or at least I don't think so (as I declare here).
That said, it feels as if I've plunged down into a Second level of Tutorial Hell by embarking on a journey to learn Web Scraping using Python.
In this deeper level of Hell, I'm encountering many, many disparate options for handling HTML code (and CSS and JS) and handling different browsers, including scraper modules like Pandas, BeautifulSoup, Selenium, Scrapy, etc. and more importantly the dreaded WebDriver that actually works with the chosen combination of browser and Python library. Many a tries result in a dead end because the setup instructions are obsolete. ...
Post Script:
So my initial mistake was relying on relatively old tutorials. The landscape has changed.
So my initial mistake was relying on relatively old tutorials. The landscape has changed.
First I found it useful to get an overview perspective of the scraping universe, for example (here by Apify). Next, I discovered tha Tech with Tim (TwT) had posted a more recent tutorial on scraping with Selenium (here). I haven't tried testing out this newer method. So ... to be continued ...
MORE TO EXPLORE
John Watson Rooney -- The Harsh Truth of Web Scraping in 2025
Dorian Develops -- Web Scraping 101: How To Scrape 99% of Sites
Apify -- Why is Python used for web scraping?
The Apify blog -- Scraping with Python
Syntax -- Web Scraping + Reverse Engineering APIs
John Watson Rooney -- How I Write Web Scrapers w/ Python
Tinkernut -- Beginners Guide To Web Scraping with Python - All You Need To Know
The PyCoach == 3 Web Scraping Projects in Python - For Beginners
PyCon AU == "Escape from Tutorial Hell" - Sarah Reichelt (PyCon AU 2025)
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