JS curriculum issues

1

Hello guys,

I just wanted to ask a really broad question that is not related to coding per se, but only to the way JS is explained here on CodeCamp (and even in other instances, I might add).

The old joke “Timmy has 3 slices of cake and a ruler, calculate the mass of the Sun” (or something along those lines) applies best to my situation: I find that most JS exercises are poorly worded. They’re not technically difficult (at least not the ones for beginners, since I’m redoing it from scratch) , but most times I have to go and look on the forum not for the solution, but for the correct interpretation of the question.

An example would be this challenge. Nowhere in the challenge is written that in order to solve it you have to use the “+=” operator, however that is the only way to solve it. Taking the long way around, although silly, is not excluded as a solution, but still not accepted.

I feel like most of the challenges have not been written from the point of view of an absolute beginner, but from that of someone who knows what good practice is and implemented it into the solution (and rightly so). I have no problem with that at all, because it’s actually a .push (sorry, had to do it) in the right direction… but this is never mentioned !

I feel that, at least for my personal experience, this was a bit of a step down in the quality of the course. I’m sure that the more I practice, the more I will pick up on this tiny things, and most surely JS is the first serious wall everyone hits. I just think that some text review might actually help :smile:.

Please share your thoughts and help me understand if this is just me or it’s more of a widespread situation :smiley:

2

I just solved it using what I consider “the long way around”. Is this what you were trying?

(click the blur)

sum = sum + 5;

What would you change about this challenge to improve it?

3

I could swear to you that when I did that it didn’t work, and I’ve rechecked the whole thing at least 10 times before trying with += :man_facepalming:

Now obviously, if it’s solvable like that then there’s nothing to change in the wording of this specific challenge, but that still stands for a number of them. Pardon me if I’m not going to list all of them, but it’s not exactly a small list.

4

Without concrete examples, it’s not a constructive discussion, so we can just stop.

5

That’s fine. You can always create an issue to propose a change in the wording.

6

You can probably understand how difficult it would be to go through all of the JS challenges and list all the changes that should be made from my own experience (which might even be because English is not my main language, who knows ?).

Considering this question is mainly aimed at people in a similar situation as mine (new learners with little to no experience with JS) I would say that this can be quite constructive:

  • if very little people have the same issue, then it can probably be assumed that the problem is not the wording itself, but just a matter of comprehension and maybe language ;
  • if a significant amount of people have felt the same way, then it might be just like I said;

This is not an IT ticket, nor a question about a specific solution or code. It’s a bit broader than that.

7

I’ll make sure to do it if I find anything that sounds particularly weird to me :slight_smile: thank you !

8

Progress requires work, it’s as simple as that.