Enjoy being a beginner instead of skipping it

For all the good that has come out of AI, I still don't think that when first starting out, this is the best way to automate complex workflows with AI.

A real comment from a redditor:

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I should say upfront that I'm very much a beginner with n8n, and work requires me to build complex automations. I've tried workarounds like n8n-mcp, but I'll get to that another time.

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As a beginner, I do think the first step is getting your hands dirty. Yes, building things can be tedious. Yes, it can be boring. But it's in the boring parts that you learn how to think and solve problems. Not by letting AI spit out a system for you.

And even then, don't get me started on how bad AI is at building n8n flows. That's beside the point. If I were completely new, I would approach it the same way I'm learning PHP right now. Watch one video on the basics, jump into something real fast, and learn by doing.

But there's a huge caveat. I can only make that jump because I know how code works, or at least know the basics like:

if, else, or, and
floats, int, string
lists, arrays, dicts
classes, functions
APIs, webhooks, requests

If I didn't know any of these, reading PHP code would be even harder. But because I know the basics, I can at least read over the code and understand it to a degree. And as I work with it, I'll get more familiar. Once I'm familiar enough, I'll understand the code at a glance, because code, as a rule, doesn't change.

So as a beginner, enjoy really learning n8n. Understand the nodes, build things, break things. Because once you enter a real codebase, all that learning will carry you.

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