Why use this? even the lessons are basically just use elements from Bootstrap. that’s not actively useful. In fact the entire way you’re teaching coding is basically a step by step guide not an actual teaching method with explanations of concepts.
People learn in lots of different ways.
FCC has helped many people using their methodology.
Okay sure, but even those people had to use their own knowledge, or go to other sources to learn the basics of being a programmer. Essentially, FCC is a how-to guide for a specific line of code. it doesn’t even show learners the tag, everything is always is already prepared in the background, and coding javascript, jQuery, or CSS happens in a tag inside the html file, instead of separated into multiple files as is standard for larger files. i don’t see this helping any newcomers to learning programming at all. it doesn’t even encourage users to seek out other sources to actually learn what they’re doing.
FreeCodeCamp doesn’t take you by the hand. It relies on you, the learner, to spend time reading documentation, ask the community when in doubt, and spend a bunch of time practicing.
If you really think something is wrong, why not propose something over github ? FCC is open source after all and is made/updated by it’s community.
The only good part is the project where the student is forced to go learn everything by themselves from scratch because they almost nothing from the lessons on here; in which case, why bother with FCC in the first place for other than the certificate?
Why use jQuery instead of vanilla javascript?
Sometimes there are more efficient ways of doing things, sometimes you have to use vanilla javascript. It’s up to the developer/project manager to talk about the requirements and what is necessary or useful.
I think if you spent a little more time with the curriculum you’d realise that your concerns are pretty well addressed in the emphasis placed on the ‘read-search-ask’ approach to problem solving.
The strength of FCC is the roadmap and the community.
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I did consider that, and this was sort of my first step to see if anyone else agrees with me. i don’t believe in hand-holding but the method FCC is using IS hand-holding without even giving an understanding of what they’re doing.
I think of it more like training wheels rather than hand holding.
Once you get into the intermediate projects, the training wheels start to come off.
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It’s not really “hand-holding”. It’s getting you ready for the real world jobs. Not every job out there requires pure CSS on projects. You’re not going to become a super “elite” coder from FCC. FCC is here to get you started in the right direction, teach you to think like a programmer, etc. It’s up to you how you want to expand from there.
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i’m not saying this out of concern for myself, but rather because these lessons, are basically a step by step guide, which means a newcomer wouldn’t bother “read-search-ask”. Besides, the way the lessons are, it gives basic misconceptions about all the code that isn’t shown.
If that’s the case, then i must’ve spoken too early. guess i’ll finish the whole thing and see if the wheels do come off.
They will 
After finishing all Front-End projects I’m going through them again, and now I can see why those first projects are so “wrong” - it’s just easier for beginners to write styling inline, to use Bootstrap etc., so you can see the progress in your learning without spending hours on hours reading about CSS media queries, how to style a button and how to make an AJAX call in vanilla JS (for someone without previous programming experience, those projects are hard enough).
Don’t be afraid to be learning ‘bad practices’ or not learning a ‘real code’. When you’ll start intermediate projects, you’ll be googling a lot and you’ll see a lot of other people’s code and by osmosis you’ll learn the ‘right way’ (sort of; ‘the right way’ is constantly changing).
P.S. My “Tribute Page” project was written in one html file with Bootstrap 
and with inline styling 
. When I came back to that project I couldn’t believe that I wrote that 
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If you’re in the U.S., check your local library. They may offer subscriptions to an online video library like Lynda.com or Treehouse.
FCC alone would not be adequate to fully understand the lessons. But at this point there is no one site that by itself can do that. Every tutorial and resource is just a part of the picture.
FCC is a part that gives you more practice and an active community to discuss things with if there are problems. It has an important place. But I’ll admit that I was bothered in the beginning that I didn’t entirely understand the code I was using. I started my learning process here, then quickly found I had to seek out many tutorials and references, and take notes on each lesson and look up the parts of the code on other sites in order to understand what I was learning here.
My notes are about over 40 pages in length total by now. I keep wishing there was a single source that could have all of this stuff in one place instead of compiling it myself.
But, maybe we’ll be the ones to make that source. If the world needs a site like that, then… make it.
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The projects are the meat and potatoes of FCC. The lessons only really familiarize folks with syntax and some basic concepts. They don’t fully prepare you for the projects and that’s a good thing. There’s no better way to learn than to painstakingly figure out on your own how to build something that is outside of your skill level.
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I advise learning syntax and concepts on Codecademy. I felt much more comfortable after that. I learned quiet a few things, not just Javascript, and it helped me see that the scope of “coding” is much more broad, expansive and complicated than: jQuery here, bootstrap there.
I returned to FCC later because it’s the entire package. The format works well, especially the algorithms and projects which are the core of programming careers. It’s an elaborate connect-the-dots for us to follow, from intro to nonprofits; it’s not a schooling system or a crash course.
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I asked a similar question on a different forum and most common answer was people thought it saved time.
I can’t speak for anyone especially since I’m very new here, but I’m almost through the intermediate front-end projects, and I already really appreciate the method used here. The very beginning does use a baby steps approach and does a good job of not scaring away newbies. But very quickly as you progress, it starts to feel more like integrating what you may experience in a job, like building something to specific functional requirements without being taught in advance each piece of what you’ll build, while at the same time being in a lower-stress environment of supportive and helpful fellow coders.
At this point, I’m utilizing resources from FCC, CodeAcademy, two different JavaScript books, Google/StackOverflow, flowcharts, and almost anything else I can get my hands on aside from working source code. I’m learning how to take a problem I don’t know how to solve and find ways to make it work, and I’m learning far more and far quicker than when I tried to initially look into tutorials like CodeAcademy or W3Schools alone. And I have work to show for it beyond lines of sterile, tutorial code - actual working things that people can interact with, which only two weeks ago I would not have been capable of.
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