Could be VERY great to select what we prefer to study in FreeCodeCamp. For example, I do not like React too much maybe I could select Angular and / or Vue to study in my stack instead React (of course that could be better study all, but the reality is if you want develop or work as soon as possible you can’t study all so I think that shouldn’t be “obligatory” study all to get a certificate).
The question is … will be some course about that?
Thanks a lot and sorry for my English
Free Code Camp currently focuses on teaching one stack as well as it can rather than several stacks poorly. You are not required to use React for your projects. There are campers who have done all the projects in Angular instead of React. There are campers who have done all the projects more than once using different frameworks.
This bears repeating. None of the compulsory challenges require any specific technology to complete. However, you’ll need to go elsewhere for learning resources. This is true of all the content, though. I certainly wouldn’t recommend using fCC as your only resource for learning React or any other library/framework. And there are plenty of great resources out there for all of the popular stacks, many of them free.
Forgive me, but I often find it odd when people trying to learn something have strong opinions about what they do and don’t like. If you know React well enough to know that you don’t like it, then these little apps shouldn’t be a problem. If you know enough to know that you prefer other libraries/frameworks, then it shouldn’t be a problem to use those.
As a professional music teacher, this is one of my pet peeves - students that come to me, who know very little, but are extremely opinionated about what they want to learn and how I should teach it to them. At some point I just want to say, “Sit down and shut up. Listen to what I teach you. After you’ve learned it, you can have an opinion about it. Even if you never use it again, it’s going to make you a better musician.” People have become focused on ego-centric, cafeteria style learning. I’m a fan of the philosophy that education should be a journey that challenges you to try things you’ve never done, not leaping from comfort zone to comfort zone.
Sorry.
[/rant]
For the front-end projects, why use a framework at all? They are great opportunities to work on the core skills of HTML, CSS and JS. But @Abakim has a point about the backend - a specific stack was chosen. You have some good points @kevinSmith - it’s true that in theory if you’re learning you should have limited opinions, but if you’re like me and you read web dev articles on a daily basis, you do develop certain opinions about frameworks you haven’t tried.
Forming opinions about frameworks you haven’t tried is fine, as long as you don’t let them actually influence you. That’s like saying “I hate fish”, but you have never actually tried fish. But you’re sure that you won’t like it anyway.
I partially agree. The thing is, in life you have limited time so trying all things is impossible. And I generally disagree when people say that your opinion doesn’t count unless you have experience in said subject. It’s perfectly ok to have opinions about things if you have been sufficiently informed about said things via reading or having conversations with people who have experienced said things or other educational means. I could name countless things I have opinions about without having experienced those things.
In programming specifically, I don’t have the time or energy to try all languages and frameworks, so I inform myself about them and form an opinion about them. I absolutely agree that my opinions on these things have limited value to others, but they are valuable to me.
Those are reasonable things that influence the choices we make (opinions we form, etc).
However, specific to JS frameworks and FCC. The nature of FCC is most people participating will be new and/or inexperienced. Until you give the framework a real review - like should not enter the picture. It should be objective. Like is not objective. I realize I’m being pedantic - but words have meanings and whether we realize it or not, the words that we write and say have power over ourselves.
There are many reasons someone might have little or no interest in a given framework. It may be known for ease of use, but is very large; it has a very prescribed way of doing development; it does not support features one considers vital; it is not a full framework, but just a library; I found it difficult to work with; I’m specifically interested in learning X framework. I’m certain you have had at least some those thoughts.
Agreed. I’m all for objectivity in principle. However I put my faith in others’ subjectivity at times. Ex: if enough people I trust tell me that a certain movie was terrible, I will likely not watch it. If that makes any sense. And forget that nonsense about pedantry - I’m all for it. And meanings of words; with that I struggle sometimes (as a francophone first).
Haha. Love the rant. A lot of people are opinionated but they base it on… not much.
In other words, they’re unconsciously incompetent and lack humility.
In one way or another, we could fault social media for the growth of this type of behavior.
People should research and listen more. This is especially true about learning to code.
In programming specifically, I don’t have the time or energy to try all languages and frameworks,
I need a sport car, but don’t have the time and energy. So, just better read the forums and choose the one with funny colors for $200k.
Sounds stupid? Yep, 'cause it is.
If you’re going for insults, at least make some sense and write complete sentences. Assuming you meant “the time and energy to test drive them”, no I wouldn’t have time and energy to test drive all sports cars on the market. I would rather read consumer guides and reviews and then maybe test drive a few of them only.
Thanks for your opinions, I agree with @Soupedenuit. And I should say I think it’s not necessary to know perfectly a language, framework or whatever to know (minimally) how and what about it is (logically).
People can know about these from a lot of sources.
Including maybe people are not studying only from FCC. For example I know little about Angular and React from other sources, and I want to continue to study FCC without React, what I should do? lose my time learning things that maybe I’ll never use?
Of course that’s good to learn more but believe me I don’t have time, I’m working and finishing Computer Engineering so I need to learn fast as possible so I decided to change the source and I’ll try to help sometimes FCC.
This it’s just an example, I think there is a lot of reasons to don’t create just one road to learn.
Regards!
I have a lot of sympathy with this, but I don’t totally agree with it. The goal of any education worth its salt should be to create independent students, and FCC does encourages us to go out and hunt down our own solutions. But independent learners are going to have opinions (inconvenient I know), and the old-fashioned top down approach: ‘sit down and do this in this order’ doesn’t exactly encourage students to take responsibility for their own study.
With coding, a simple linear curriculum is a bit artificial. Building a website means mastering a basket of skills and making them work together. And there are dozens of different ways to achieve it. Much better to offer a choice of paths and let students follow their own interests.
It’s a matter of degrees. Like when I was working on my MA in music. Yeah, I had opinions about what I’d rather be learning and even disagreed with a little of what I was taught. But I respected the system enough to just sit back and learn. After, some of my preconceived notions were abandoned. Some were reinforced. But I trusted my teachers and learned a lot in the process.
Yeah, I remember some guys in the program that complained about the “old-fashioned top-down” system. These guys wanted to take charge of their own studies. Of the four I can think of off the top of my head, not one finished their degree. None of them finished any degree. Three of them have menial jobs. These were really smart guys that just couldn’t fit into the system. They thought they could do a better job - they couldn’t.
And we live in a culture that reinforces that nihilistic attitude. We live in the “me-me-me” culture on steroids. Our culture encourages egocentrism and solipsism.
There is a spectrum from the old school top-down approach and the “I’m the center of the universe and I’ll decide what I need to learn” approach. Things use to be swung to far in one direction. Now - at least for some - it’s swung to far in the other.
As a teacher, I love when students ask questions. I love it when they have opinions. And there are times when I say, “OK, let’s try that out and see where it leads.” But then there is the other extreme. A few months ago I had a student come in and ask to learn jazz. I love playing jazz and I love teaching it. But then he said, “Yeah, but I don’t really want to learn any chords, music theory, and I hate playing scales.” [sigh] There is no way to do that. I tried, but he only lasted a month before quitting.
I agree that “with coding, a simple linear curriculum is a bit artificial”. I would even say that any path is somewhat arbitrary. But any path (chosen by knowledgeable people) is better than having an uninformed, somewhat random, self-directed path. Like my old music theory teacher used to say, “There is more than one answer. There are also and infinite number of wrong answers, but it is true that there is more than one right one.” Yes, there are a lot of ways to get from my house to the airport. But you probably won’t get there by guessing streets at random. You’d need to already know where the airport is and know the streets pretty well. Or have someone guide you.
We tend to lionize the self-taught approach. But in reality, there aren’t many true autodidacts that succeed. Most people just don’t have the discipline, especially in our world of distractions.
Most people here are probably a mix. Yes, I followed the FCC path, but I also took a lot of self-directed side trips. Those were valuable. But so was following a good path that led me somewhere.
There is a question of temperament or learning style. Personally I’ve always felt pretty bored in lectures, but I got a good degree and a good masters by heading to the library and hitting the books. I’ve been a teacher too, and I’ve always found that the best students are the ones who don’t need me.
But it also depends on the subject. With music, for sure, there are certain fundamental skills that have to be learned; there is an order of complexity / difficulty. If you are learning fundamental Javascript, then there is a pretty obvious curriculum. Likewise CSS, or Angular, whatever. But once you get passed the basics, the answers are not so obvious: Ruby or Node? Java or C#? Angular or React? MongoDB or MySQL? At this point the student has to start making some of their own decisions.
Another obvious point is this: people here are training to be engineers. Part of that job is to evaluate different tech and choose the best tool for the job, and be able to explain why. The spoon-feeding approach is not going to develop this skill.
@abakim
I would be interested in the reasons you don’t like React. You did not say.
The approaches of the frameworks are quite different in that Angular,Vue & Ember you are writing code inside the HTML where as React you are writing JavaScript to generate the HTML all be it as JSX.
I believe React is simpler to learn for this reason.
By the way, I plan to do a project in VueJs just for the experience.
“I’ve been a teacher too, and I’ve always found that the best students are the ones who don’t need me.”
We’re getting a little OT here, but I agree somewhat, if I accept this as hyperbole. I always tell my students, “I’m not your teacher, you are.” I tell them that I’m showing them how to teach themselves. But they still need that guidance. If I truly felt anyone didn’t need my guidance though, it would be unethical for me to accept money from them.
“But once you get passed the basics, the answers are not so obvious: …”
I agree 100%. As I said, there is more than one path. And more than one destination. But that is not to say that all paths lead to good destinations.
The other obvious point is that people that come here are looking for guidance. If they already have it figured out - what they want to learn and how it should be taught - then they don’t need FCC. They could just do it themselves. But they are trying to straddle the fence - they want to ask for guidance but already know what they think the answer should be and what it shouldn’t be.
“Another obvious point is this: people here are training to be engineers. Part of that job is to evaluate different tech and choose the best tool for the job, and be able to explain why.”
I started out as an engineering major. I don’t remember anyone saying, “I don’t want to study vector calculus.” or “I think I’ll skip chemistry.” or this program is bogus because I don’t think I should have to learn digital electronics - I only want to learn signal processing." There is a big difference between an educated professional making an educated judgement about technology to use and an absolute beginner trying to pick and chose against the advice of professionals.
Again, there is more than one path. I certainly have chosen mine. But I’ve listened to the pros about how to get there. I didn’t just pick things at random because they kinda sorta sounded like they might be fun. And there have been aspects of this path that I haven’t liked - but learned them anyway and have been pleased with the results.
“The spoon-feeding approach is not going to develop this skill.”
Wow, that has to be the first time that FCC has even been accused of “spoon-feeding”. Most people consider it the exact opposite. They provide a path, some bare-bones tutelage, and then throw you to the wolves. I think that’s a good approach, letting the student learn how to research and teach themselves. But it’s still a meaningful path, going someplace.
I totally agree with this, but I think you are ignoring the difference between fundamentals and options. Abakim was asking about alternatives to React. That is not a fundamental skill for a web developer, it’s just a popular library.
[quote=“arw2015, post:19, topic:177368”]
I totally agree with this, but I think you are ignoring the difference between fundamentals and options. Abakim was asking about alternatives to React. [/quote]
Agreed. A fair point, but the conversation has evolved beyond that.
True. It is definitely not the only path. I do think that a successful web dev does usually need to choose some king of path. Maybe not specifically React, but something. It’s impossible to say that any particular of these paths is the correct path, but you need some path. There aren’t many jobs out there for people with just HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS. Most are going to need several libraries and some other supporting technologies.
Maybe I can switch metaphors here. Coming into FCC and complaining about React would be like going into a pizza restaurant and saying, “I can’t stand pizza. Why don’t you guys have sushi or hamburgers?”