Tell us what’s happening:
Sometimes it’s helpful to refer to past exercises to solve something I’m currently busy with, but since the upgrade to FCC, if I open an exercise it automatically resets everything I did on it.
Is this functionality intentional or is there a way to disable this?
Short answer: I believe that if you run the tests (even if you know they will fail) that FCC will save your in-progress code to your browser cache. That means that it will still be there if you are using the same browser on the same computer and you haven’t cleared your browser’s storage (or allowed an automated tool to do it for you).
Long answer: There are two different types of saved progress for Free Code Camp: your profile and your browser cache.
A list of your completed challenges is saved to your account in the FCC database. You can see the list of completed challenges by looking at your public portfolio. With a growing curriculum already over 1,400 lessons and a growing user base several times that size, FCC does not store every solution to ever challenge in its database. There are some challenges which are classified as projects required for certifications. Your solutions to those can be viewed on your settings page.
Your in-editor code is saved in your browser’s local storage. Recent in-progress code from the challenge editor is also saved in your local browser cache when you run tests. Because FCC rolled out a completely new application, the old cached values are no longer valid. This is the same effect you would have if you cleared your browser cache. If you are completing lessons and do not see your recent code, then something is preventing FCC from writing to your browser’s storage. This could be a browser setting, a privacy extension, or a browser version incompatibility. Especially as you get to more complicated challenges that may take multiple sessions, I strongly recommend saving your in-progress work outside of the browser cache.
This is a good opportunity to learn the ins and outs of your GitHub account, but you can also just save locally or use a service like repl.it which allows for versioning.
aaaaaaah…
well that’s unfortunate…
Majority of my exercises were done on the old application so I really wish I knew this before the new application launched so I could save the exercises I sometimes refer back to
Any chance FCC would consider bringing out functionality similar to Exercism any time soon - they’re platform allows you to save your solutions and even iterations on what you did? It really helps learning a new language or acting as examples of how you’ve solved problems.
I was hoping FCC could act as a way to show people examples of code I’ve done - quite often people care more about how you solved the exercise instead of just being happy that you managed to solve it, which makes sense in development.
Either way, thanks for clearing up the confusion