I started using freeCodeCamp back in 2024. I’d had a web design class way back in high school, but it sucked and left me with only a little more understanding of web design than I had before I took the class. When I started freeCodeCamp, I learned more in a week than I ever learned in that entire class that I took. The fact that everything was completely hands-on and introduced a variety of concepts was very appealing to me. The second lesson had me already learning CSS, something my high school class just completely ignored. Every lesson gave me new things that I could immediately put into practice with my own web page, building it out from black text on a white background to a full-fledged stylized site. Due to some big life changes in the months after I started, I never quite finished the v8 certification sadly.
When v9 was introduced, I had to start over from the beginning. What I’d done previously carried over of course, but there was a lot of new stuff added and everything was restructured. I jumped into it anyway, thinking that I could quickly clear out the new stuff and get back on track, but it’s been miserable to progress. Where v8 gave me a variety of topics that kept me engaged and felt like I was actually designing web pages from the very first lesson, v9 is mostly reading with very short workshops/labs and they’re all so focused on certain subjects with such minimalist hands-on projects that it quickly gets boring. V8 drops you into CSS on the second lesson and incorporates CSS into the very first certification project. V9 doesn’t even touch CSS until you’re 318 “steps” in. “Basic HTML” has its own incredibly long section on accessibility, which is great to put focus on, but none of it feels meaningful in the learning process of the curriculum where some “theory” lessons talk about things that primarily require CSS/JavaScript and the actual hands-on lessons are so minimalist and sporadic.
Compare the v9 “survey form” certification project to the v8 version. Completing v8 feels satisfying. It involves working with CSS alongside practicing the basic HTML of building forms. V9 gives you a bland, style-less page. It’s not interesting. It’s not satisfying. It’s not something that feels worth showing off. In v8, I included the final results of every lesson and project on my personal site for demonstrations of the things I was learning. I feel embarrassed to add v9 lessons to that showcase.
I’m sure there are people who find the format and structure of v9 to be a lot better for them, but it’s really alienating to me and I’m sure plenty of others who found the format, structure, and pace of v8 to be far more conducive to learning. I would really love to see more hands-on work again from the beginning with the theory incorporated into the hands-on lesson. I’d love to see longer hands-on lessons from the beginning again that deal with multiple topics that show how everything fits together in the process of putting it together. If anything, basic JavaScript should be incorporated into the early parts of the Responsive Web Design course alongside CSS, not separating everything out so far. For some of us, we learn best when we’re given plenty to work with that we can immediately apply to our own projects while heavy reading makes it hard to stay focused.
The version of freeCodeCamp’s web design course that I started with a couple years ago taught me so much in just a week. The version of that course that exists now is so tedious and boring that I’m barely able to force myself to progress and I learn next to nothing every time. I might just abandon v9 and return to v8 if it didn’t feel like whatever certificate that earns (if it still earns a certificate) won’t mean as much because it’s “outdated.” freeCodeCamp was a different way to learn that worked better for me than anything else; now it feels like my high school web design class. If I were just starting freeCodeCamp today, I doubt that I would stick with it for even a week.