So i am building a game following someones tutorial. I am making changes here and there and play with the code a little bit. But my more experienced friend keeps telling me not to watch tutorials for building games, as I was kinda copying someone elses code. What i had in mind was making my first game through a tutorial. And then i would do the rest myself. Is it really bad to watch tutorials like this? Is my friend right?
Yes tutorials, or no tutorials.
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Creatorsbet Imho, tutorials are useful for people with solid fundamental knowledge to quickly get up to speed on a specific topic. For a beginner they are a double edged sword. You may pick up something and get a quick sense of accomplishment upon finishing a tutorial, but learning exclusively from them will leave large gaps in your conceptual thinking. Doing a lot of tutorials also atrophies your problem solving muscles. And without strong problem solving skills you won't get far with game development.
xyz I see, so, little to no tutorials huh? Okay thanks
Creatorsbet In addition to what @xyz said: A problem with tutorials is that beginners quickly start relying on them and when they eventually run into a problem they will look for another tutorial for help instead of trying to understand what the problem actually is. And tutorials can only get you so far. Eventually you will reach areas that tutorials don't cover because the vast majority are just surface level. And at that point you need good fundamentals and the ability to help yourself to either continue on your own or be able to ask the right questions to get help.
Creatorsbet I see, so, little to no tutorials huh?
No you can watch them, just don't rely on them. I tend to watch videos on Youtube at downtime. Meaning at a time where I won't sit down and do proper work like in the evening or maybe when I am tired or exhausted and wouldn't do anything productive anyways. Basically "I want to do something productive and this is just better than nothing". And they can be a good source of inspiration or just solidifying your knowledge by simple repetition.
Consider watching multiple tutorials on the same topic and making it an exercise to note what they do the same or differently and what the implications of those differences are. Also, maybe create rough designs for how you'd go about doing the thing before you watch any of them.
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Creatorsbet I see, so, little to no tutorials huh? Okay thanks
If your personality type is such that it intuitively induces generalizations from examples, and you have an innate drive to experiment a lot with newly discovered things, you'll benefit from tutorials much more than someone who is oriented on tightly following instructions. In the latter case it's better to enroll in a course that deals with your topic of interest in a comprehensive way.
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xyz You may pick up something and get a quick sense of accomplishment upon finishing a tutorial, but learning exclusively from them will leave large gaps in your conceptual thinking.
When I was learning Android app development with Android Studio, I did a tutorial series from Google. There would be instructions like "add these lines here, another 20 lines there, etc.". At the end, the instructor would say, "Wasn't that easy? You just made your first Android ABC app!"
Well no, you made the app. I just pasted in the code you provided.
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DaveTheCoder Yeah this shows typical tutorial mindset, so widespread on todays web. The instructor's goal is all too often to make people feel good about themselves without investing any mental effort (and thus declare the instructor awesome) instead of actually engage them into properly learning the thing.
the best tutorials for beginners teach you how to learn and study better just as much as they teach the concept of the thing you're looking for.
anything more specific is better when you're experienced and simply having a brain fart.
games are complicated. having a good guide when you're starting out is useful if you want to keep doing the thing you want to enjoy without wondering what a bullet may feel like lodged in your skull.
A good tutorial will teach you to understand the basic concepts on which the game is built, so you can later apply them to your own game. A bad tutorial is based on phrases like "write this code and trust me, it's correct". Find good tutorials and discard the rest.
We're at a point were it's very easy to find a tutorial for anything, but it's really hard to find GOOD tutorials. Most tutorials just focus on explaining WHAT you need to do and use no time in explaining WHY you have to do it that way. My advice is to only use tutorials for very specific stuff and always support them with documentation: Don't just copy and paste the code provided in the tutorial, make sure you understand what it's doing and check the relevant documentation on the functions or systems being used. Experiment and change stuff: If you're following an Asteroids tutorial, add a health system to the asteroids, powerups for the player, different movement patterns for the asteroids...Your focus when using a tutorial should be to LEARN, not to just get something done.
Fencer Hey I love your shader tutorials! Thanks a lot for creating them!
DaveTheCoder Quite right. These type of tutorials are absolutely terrible.
Fencer Find good tutorials and discard the rest.
The only problem is, when you're a beginner you can't really distinguish good tutorials from bad ones. The main criteria an average person may typically apply is "easy to follow". And bad tutorials in "click this, select that" style are mostly... well... easy to follow.
In my opinion, a beginner has no choice other than to watch tutorials. Do we expect him to guess everything? He should start from somewhere. But it's important to expand what you learn by applying them to different scenarios. I think what you are doing is perfectly fine. Keep watching tutorials until you have a solid understanding of Godot workflow and game development.
Just keep recreating what you learn in tutorials in your own unique projects, trying to do it on your own. This is the way I learned everything, and it's the fastest.
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while-free- This is the way I learned everything, and it's the fastest.
Including whether to multiply by delta? 
The thing is, in order to do game development in any serious capacity, you don't really need to "learn game dev", let alone "learn the engine". You'll need "boring stuff" like math, general purpose programming and hardware architecture. That's the reality most people don't like to face. Once you're proficient with those and attain decent problem solving skills, you can do any type of "dev", including games, for any type of platform, including "engines".
It's always about fundamentals. People who are disinterested in "boring" fundamentals in favor of more "exciting" stuff, typically don't go very far in any skill based field.
And tutorials, being a form of sophistry, by their very nature rarely deal with fundamentals.
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xyz You'll need "boring stuff" like math, general purpose programming and hardware architecture.
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It's always about fundamentals.
Well finally! I've been waiting for some basic stuff to be mentioned. 
But, just for creating games, I'd add art basics, which is forgotten even more often than math. 
Creatorsbet What i had in mind was making my first game through a tutorial.
Have you looked at the official documentation yet? It's the easiest and most convenient place to start.
xyz True, and also the other ugly truth that no one wants to hear is: You need a lot of time to get decent.
I started learning programming in the 80s and early 90s with C64 BASIC, Amiga BASIC and then QBASIC on MS DOS. As you can imagine that was over the span of years. And only then on MS DOS was I old enough to actually wonder and ask myself why my programs run so slow in comparison to real games. Which let me to realize that BASIC is terribly slow and I started learning Pascal, Assembly and later on C. And this was all still on MS DOS but it took years.
Now of course the resources we had back then were limited and going into a big shop and looking at the books was pretty much the only option we had.
But this did teach us three very important things: a) how to find information on our own, b) how to make use of what we had and c) fundamentals. If you were stuck you had to figure it out with what you had. After all there was no internet to ask.
As I said, this took years but that didn't really matter because I was a kid/teen.
My point is: Learning how to program and write decent code takes a long time and the only way to get good at it is to invest a lot of time, start small and learn the fundamentals, get your hands dirty and make a bloody lot of mistakes and learn from them. But no beginner wants to hear that. (And to be honest I cannot blame them.)
xyz The problem Godot suffers from, is the lack of good comprehensive tutorials. What I said applies when there are enough good resources. It's about half an hour I'm searching for something, and I'm not sure whether or not what is taught here and there is a good practice for Godot. I bet I'll have to come here and ask about it in the end, and you are probably the one who is gonna answer me... xD
while-free- The problem Godot suffers from, is the lack of good comprehensive tutorials.
It's hard to find something better and more detailed than the official documentation. For further in-depth study, there are courses from GDQuest and KidsCanCode.
Toxe I started learning programming in the 80s and early 90s with C64 BASIC, Amiga BASIC and then QBASIC on MS DOS. As you can imagine that was over the span of years.
The threshold of entry is getting lower. This is objective.