Just learning at Free code camp. Am I at the right place

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I just started using free code camp to learn and understand computer programming. I know that if I want to learn comp sci this isnt the spot, but if I am try to get a good foundation for coding(back end primarily) is this a good place?

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You won’t know unless you try! :wink:

Welcome! :slight_smile:

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I’ll be honest and say you will NOT get a good foundation for coding on FCC. Why? It does not teach the fundamentals or foundation with which you need. FCC is a community, challenges, and projects. Don’t expect to learn Javascript or Node here - you won’t. You will become aggravated and possible give up on coding. Learn it elsewhere. Codecademy has some good interactive tutorials for javascript and similar for free. Udemy has some great video courses that are very well explained and thought out, and occasionally sale for $10 - $20 each. You Don’t Know JS book on GitHub is a MUST read. My point is this. FCC does not have a tutorial like system. It has challenges and projects that will help you reinforce what you know, motivate and point you toward other things you need to know, and a fabulous community and forum if you struggle.

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An interesting comment.
I wonder what Quincy will say on this one, or maybe the people who learned from FCC and now work in the industry… :neutral_face:

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Its my honest opinion from what I’ve learned on here, seen what other notable people say, and from people I have seen struggle on here.

Could you learn just on here? of course, but it would be a lot more difficult imho, and I don’t think you would have a complete understand and good foundation of what you are doing - it would be more imitation because this works and others do it. Again, show me where on FCC there is a tutorial that explains how something works under the hood or similar. You need other resources for understanding of principles and coding mechanics.

As for Quincy, you will see he liked a similar post I made:

As a side note, it never hurts to try other sites out too does it?

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I totally agree on using the other sources, but in reality you can’t use them all and you need to focus on the ones which are known as “the best” or recommended by the people who’ve “been there done that”.

So after some exploring a few months ago, I’ve found the FCC to be one of the best in the field and I totally trust its approach etc. I also have a course in Udemy, have an account in Lynda and have couple of courses in Codeschool ready for my educational appetite , but FCC is like an anchor for me and my goal is to first of all finish the full stack curriculum of FCC before diving to too much other sources.

Now according to your post, I might to reconsider using the FCC as my anchor in terms of coding education and maybe you’re right but I’m not the person to argue on this opinion since I’m still in the beginning of the journey so I wonder if people who already completed the camp can comment here… :slight_smile:

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First off, I totally agree with you, FCC is my favorite resource, as it brings everything together and is a path.
It will be find to get the opinion of someone who has finished, seeing only 100 people exactly have finished :wink:

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This is very good advice too. I learned OOP from books several years ago, and when I started FCC later, everything was easy to understand. Plus if you do learn another language like Java, C#, or Python, you can still use it for Android dev or screw Node and use that language for back-end.

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It’s up to you. FCC does not teach you how to swim in baby steps, it mostly shows some basic drills and then pushes you into the water. The most notable advice here IMO is Read-Search-Ask particularly reading, searching part. Most universities also do the same, but they have 4 years to do that, you feel the social pressure and strong social interactions drive you (and it’s hard to cheat).
Also javascript is notoriously confusing, it has several design errors that probably will never get fixed.

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Good advice, can you post the design errors it has, I can’t think of any.

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At the top of my head:

  • NaN means not-a-number yet typeof NaN is number
  • isNaN() returns true for other arguments (like string)
  • undefined does not really mean not defined
  • undefined is a type, and a value, and you can also use it as identifier
  • there’s no operator overloading, yet + is somehow overloaded to concatenate strings
  • standard says typeof null is Null, yet typeof null returns object in every implementation
    etc etc, the internet is full of info on this subject, keywords “javascript bad parts”, watch/read Douglas Crockford, read YDKJS
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