A boolean would also work yes. In Blender there are always many many ways to do the same thing, none of them right or wrong, just different approaches. As you work you learn to judge what approach would work best and use it, but it doesn’t really mean going any other way was wrong either. In this case, as you say, since it’s a tutorial, the teacher also has in mind how to use different methods so we can see different ways of doing the same thing. So don’t think too much about it, I think more importantly is that you try for yourself when you have an idea so you start seeing the pro’s and con’s of how you choose to do your modeling.
