At first, seeing a long list of ingredients can be intimidating when you want to cook something new. You have to carefully plan your shopping trip, making sure you haven’t forgotten anything at the supermarket. Once in the kitchen, you follow every quantity and instruction the recipe gives, investing time and effort. Hopefully, your dish turns out delicious and you get to enjoy it with your loved ones.

With experience, you realize you don’t need every single ingredient. Some items are essential, but others can be replaced or skipped altogether. Quantities become less rigid as you learn the balance needed for your dish, and you adapt on the fly to achieve the consistency you want.

The same process applies to your coding journey. In the beginning, you follow every instruction and try to fill every gap in your knowledge. You trust the solutions you’re given and use them as references for your own projects. But over time and with practice, you discover that there are multiple ways to reach the same goal. Eventually, you realize you don’t need to learn every new programming tool—mastering the basics lets you understand the rest.

Like in cooking, expertise in coding comes with time and experience. Until you get there, it’s perfectly fine to follow the recipe.