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Please delete this thread thank you

Why do you think that not using var makes a difference to what’s being taught? (it doesn’t, btw)

Is your question why does the local variable override the global variable? Or is the test just not passing?

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My question rather is, why is some of the curriculum so confusing and sometimes even contradicting? Almost everytime the reason for my result not passing was that I had some whitespace somewhere, or that I used a different order for something, or that Brave shut down a tracker which was for some reason required to pass the test. And a lot of other people have similar issues, since Im always forced to search the forums and wikis on why the test says “Your bla bla is not defined” when it is in fact defined and the result works in studio code and in local instances

Yes, but it makes no practical difference to what’s being taught there. It doesn’t change how the code works. Because some parts of the curriculum were first written several years ago, var is often used, but replacing it with let makes zero difference in 99% of the lessons.

No, IRL you would use let or const exclusively. You would not use var.

The tests have to test both the output of the code (where whitespace/order are generally irrelevant) and the actual text of the code you have written. If they didn’t do that, then you would be able to bypass most of the tests or write something completely different to what the lesson is trying to teach. The trade-off for that is that they are quite strict on the specific structure of the code you write because they need to run regexes on it. This is unavoidable. If someone is being tested on syntax, the test has to check the syntax. But if the syntax is checked, then they cannot be free to write anything.

I apologise for your frustration, but you’re being extremely rude to actual real people because you’re being asked to use the variable keyword var :man_shrugging:t3:

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You’ll learn about let in the ES6 section, please be patient till then. Obviously they haven’t introduced it yet because that way you’ll be able to understand it’s value more since by that point you’re fairly decent with the fundamentals like loops and booleans

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x You may like to check this out, it’s free, but it’s brilliant.

Hi!

It would be a lot more productive if, instead of (or in addition to) venting in the forums, you could either

a) Create a feasible list of which bits needs to be fixed and send it to the team (as you are going through the curriculum now and seem to spot the iffy bits, it would be easier for you to do that)
b) Ask to contribute to the open source material if you have the time to fix the “confusing” and “contradictory” portions
c) Write a less angry, more legible post to guide those learning from the curriculum as to what you found outdated and/or missing

Lots of systems are “broken” but this one is one where the team is genuinely putting in a lot of effort to provide great material… And hating on them doesn’t help anyone, it only demotivates them…

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freeCodeCamp uses strict mode, if you have not it active you get less errors on other environments

Thank you for helping make FCC better. Bugs can be reported as GitHub Issues. Whenever reporting a bug, please check first that there isn’t already an issue for it and provide as much detail as possible.

Anyway, the curriculum is being completely reworked to bring it to current tech and to answer feedbacks received through the years like the too big gap when reaching the projects.

If you want to contribute to make freeCodeCamp better, you can read contributing guidelines at contribute.freecodecamp.org

Yes I know its just more than frustrating, already learning something new and difficult and get hit with the most dumb errors possible. Its like watching a movie and the audio cuts out sporadically and you have to go back a few seconds everytime because you missed what was said but you absolutely need to know what was said. When Im in the mode “learning and paying attention” I cant just snap out every 2 minutes because I need to fix something. As it is the case with the “Run Test” and it says failed. “Sum of variable should be 6” and thats it. no further clues. But the variable is indeed defined and with the correct num. So whats the issue? And I need to go digging to years old forum posts everytime just to find out that someone in 2017 already had that problem and was so kind to say “get rid of the //comment and it works.” That is the most frustrating part. I dont need to make a list because its every other test which has such strict and hardcoded needs to be passed.

Its not about what word is to be used to assign a variable, I just took this as one of many examples and because it fit with the recent segment. Also because I couldnt figure out how to post in this forum. In fact I dont even know if I reply to the correct comments rn.

The script that lets you pass the text definetly needs to be reworked. Its more than frustrating being in “learn mode” and having to snap out of it every 5mins to try and fix stuff, only to learn that someone from 2017 had the exact same issue and was kind enough to leave a fix. It makes the overall website seem abandoned and kind of left in the wild. Why was the issue which has been reported 5 years ago not been noticed and or tried to fix? You are dealing with people completely new to coding and you cant expect them to open up bug reports on github for such miniscule things. I have a background of robotics and I still have trouble figuring stuff out with javascript and this website. Some curriculums needed testing or still need testing, but not by someone who coded it, or is a senior dev, but by someone who is new to it. Otherwise you will always have people complaining or reporting to you “not reproducible bugs or problems”

If you don’t make a list of what you think is broken, we can’t do a thing. We can’t fix something that we don’t know about.

But honestly, programming is a fundamentally frustrating discipline. We get paid to solve exacting, pedantic tasks where the smallest little things make the difference between our code having the correct result when integrated into the larger project and our code utterly and inexplicably failing to work.

Code must be precise. Computers are stupid. You can’t “get the gist” correct and have the computer be able to understand. Computers can only understand literally, completely exact and correct instructions.

I think that you should consider if that sort of exacting pedantry that computers require is something that you are interested in.

I waited for something like this. Yes my Post was quite rude (stems from the frustration and having to stop the learning procedure regularly)

I come from a background of robotics and did work with ICs and C++ in the past. So I know very well what Im dealing with. That was some time ago and I might not remember anything though. Computers arent stupid though and you can very well have the gist correct as that was exactly what I worked with as engineer. Its also not being arrogant or anything. I come here to learn not to argue in forums but I couldnt hold back anymore as I had to stop and try to figure out what went wrong on freecodecamps site.

Computers are literal. They can only follow the literal instructions given and have no intelligence of their own. This is what I mean by “computers are stupid”.

No, you can’t. With programming the details must be correct. Small problems make big changes in the outcome of code.


We are more than willing to help you and answer your questions before you reach the point of swearing at us.

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Thats why there should be fallbacks and whatnot to keep the details correct. I as a learner cant make it the way like the author of the lesson intended. i might put an unnecessary whitespace somewhere, I might forget semicolons, I might add stuff thats not required but still works for the lesson. Im linking you to one of the problems I encountered and for which many people reported bugs and provided fixes yet nothing was done (or could be done?)
Lesson:

Hint page:

I did it correctly the first time yet I got every error possible and I still dont know what caused it. Yes case sensitive checked, tracker disabled, page refreshed absolutely everything. I couldnt get it to pass, yet when I straight up copy paste the solution from the hint page it worked. why? idk! I can only imagine it was a whitespace issue (which shouldnt be an issue)

What I’m saying is that it is literally impossible for computers to understand wrong input. The answer isn’t to “magically” make computers understand wrong input. Sometimes input and output need to be character for character correct. The computer can’t just “guess” that you’re right and do what you meant instead of what you said.

Right. Welcome to the world of coding. In the real world of coding, you often don’t get any message explaining what the problem is, let alone to pinpoint exactly where the problem is. Additionally, to write tests that account for every possible permutation of a wrong answer and give a unique message for each of those - I can’t even contemplate how complicated that would be.

Personally, I like the way it is now, that is a common scenario where I have a user story (requirement) and I just get back a message from the QA team that the requirement was not met. They don’t dig into my code and tell me where the problem is.

As a further example, I have been working on a bug with no indication of what is wrong. And unfortunately because of the way the app (mobile) is set up, I can’t even use dev tools.


As the var vs. let, as stated, sections of these were written before let came in with ES6. We still teach pre-ES6 and ES6 separately (as many places still do). And it’s good to learn var because you will run across it in old code. But, your friends are right - let is better, you should never use var. But you still have to know it and understand the subtle differences with let.

Could there be improvements to the curriculum? Sure. But I also think the overall plan is good.

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This has not been my experience. In fact, I often think that the examples are too similar to what the challenge is asking and thus make it too easy. For example, this challenge on global vs. local scope, the example is literally the exact same thing as the challenge except the names have been changed.

Yes, there may be issues with certain browsers or installed browser extensions. If Brave is giving you problems then I would suggest you use a different browser when using FCC. I’ve been using Firefox with FCC for years now and have never run into a problem.

Is FCC perfect? No. Does FCC work for everyone? No. There are a ton of resources out there for learning JS and web development in general, especially if you are able to spend a little money on your education. Perhaps you should test some others and compare to see if they work better for you?

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What, what? Examples please?

Are you expecting the example to show you exactly what to do?