I’ve discovered that apparently new curriculum has come out, which reset all the progress I had made toward getting the front end development certification. I know you can still get the “legacy certification,” but am I right to assume that’s just worthless now? And I guess I wouldn’t be too hurt about starting over but what is with the new format where the code is mixed in with the instructions instead of giving instructions/clear place to work/preview? Confusing, ugly, visual vomit. Please tell me there’s some way to change that to how it used to be or I am not going to be able to use this website to learn. It is completely intolerable.
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Why would it be worthless? I have certificates from before these last ones. Are those doubly worthless?
And, people may not like to hear this, but the certificates are not worth an awful lot anyway. They are essentially self-awarded because they come from a self-guided course with no real evaluation other than the honor system. How does an employer know that you didn’t just google all these things and cut and paste.
The certificates are not what is valuable. It is what you learned and what you built. No employer is going to get excited because you have the API cert. Looking at the APIs that you built might get her attention. If you kept building more and more interesting APIs on more and more complex projects, building on what you’ve learned … now, that’s more like it.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t call the certificates worthless. They are nice milestones. Feel proud of the accomplishment. They’re at least something to put on your resume and show that you worked at learning something. But your portfolio and how well you interview are a million times more important in terms of getting a job.
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Why fix what isn’t broken?
Well, I wasn’t part of the new development, in coding or planning. But they are just trying to improve things. People don’t like change. Or sometimes change takes a while for people to get used to it. And ultimately there is no way to make something that pleases everyone.
Just give it a chance.
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HI @nick.faggiano !
Welcome to the forum!
As was already mentioned, the learning is the most important part.
The certificates are for personal satisfaction and personal goals.
You could just use the legacy certificate and keep learning from there.
If you like the old curriculum there is nothing wrong with using that. 
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Welcome there,
The certifications are exactly the same. That is, the five certification projects are the same, and will allow you to claim the same Responsive Web Design certificate.
As mentioned, the legacy content is still there for you to do, and you can complete the curriculum, and still claim exactly the same certification.
Hope this clarifies.
Big thank you to everyone who has been helpful in clarifying this. I know people hate criticism, but I am genuinely trying to be helpful when I say that it might be a good idea to at least offer the old format with the updated curriculum going forward assuming it is feasible to do so. From my point of view, the new one is kind of like asking someone to write an essay but instead of giving them a prompt at the top and lines to write under it you smacked the prompt in the middle of the page. Doable, of course, but a bit confusing to both write and to read. Best wishes to all of you, and thank you for making it possible to learn this valuable skill for free.
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I know the legacy courses are still there. The rest of my sentence was pretty important for what I was trying to say. I did not just write it for fun
The new stuff is the new stuff. The old stuff is the old stuff. Asking for a special mix of the two is, in fact, unreasonable.
So the only change to the curriculum with the update is the format of the website?
No. It is a massive update to the RWD curriculum. Content and format have been significantly updated. The only thing that is the same is the final certification projects.
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Then how is suggesting an option to learn the new curriculum with the instructions on the left, a separate workspace in the center, and a preview on the right unreasonable?
it’s not compatible with the new multifile editor
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The new curriculum is built specifically for the new format.
@nick.faggiano I recommend opening up a Feature Request on the repository with your suggestion: GitHub - freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp: freeCodeCamp.org's open-source codebase and curriculum. Learn to code for free.
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Understood. Keep in mind in my earlier comment I did say, “if it is feasible to do so,” so it’s not like I was under the impression I knew how it all works and that it would be a simple thing to do.
I didn’t know that was a thing. Thank you for linking it to me.
Separate INFO and CODE tags are the way to go.
The other way is just confusing clutter on mobile devices.
Even if it is not possible to separate the instructions from the code anymore; why remove all of the explanatory text and examples? I was working through the new modules with my wife, who wants to learn, and its extremely frustrating that many of the steps now just say to do something without any explanation or examples of what the instructions entail or the syntax required.
I’m seeing examples and explanatory text. For example, here: