Absolutely. Learning to "code" by taking codeacademy lessons, is okay but you don't get a product you can maintain, tweak, and break. In my experience if you set out to make a thing and do whatever it takes to make that thing, you will learn more and have something to come back to and refine constantly. Plus it teaches you to break a problem into steps and you learn where to find good info. It may mean that you miss some fundamentals, but you can come back to those if you decide to stick with it.