It depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to teach gamedev, then I agree it is a pain. However, if you teach a general graphics course in

It depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to teach gamedev, then I agree it is a pain. However, if you teach a general graphics course in a CS curriculum, then the slow, spec-like approach is way better. Regardless I never liked the NeHe tutorials for some reason. I did them when fixed pipeline was a thing and they bore me a lot, yeah... but when I learnt modern GL properly it was way better. Seeing a cube rotate is irrelevant to motivation as long as you understand what you are doing, in my experience.