Continuing with Full Stack Javascript Development track

I don't want to discount what you've shared, as you're entitled to an opinion and I believe open communication will only make the curriculum stronger, and frankly how you feel can open others up to share the same feelings. When you said " I have never used anything but workspaces, which crashes all the time", it tells me you haven't been developing outside of the exercises. I can't blame you if teamtreehouse has never told you what I'm about to tell you: The feedback loop on this site is rewarding and sometimes...comfortable. You knock out an exercise and you earn some points and a badge. It feels good, and it's not enough. You've got to roll up your sleeves and apply what you're learning to your own projects. To have almost finished a full-stack program and have never used a text-editor outside of "workspaces" (like Atom, Sublime, VSCode) to any developer is mind-boggling. This isn't an insult to you, but a wake-up call to any developers in the same boat. Apply, apply, apply. With all of that said, programming is HARD. I've been stabbing away at a lot of this stuff and the fact is that you're not going to pick it all up right away. It's not because anyone is stupid, it just takes time. You're going to feel pretty low sometimes, but it is a field of ups and downs, and IMO the ups are worth it. I find myself revisiting notes and videos and absorbing videos from other places, books, blogs, wherever I can get it. What may be a great video for one could be a useless video for another. I think what you've touched on is there should be more instruction on weighing the different text editors, because that is SO important. A video on a self-starter attitude and what it takes to rarely know the answer to something, but to find it anyway. Again this isn't a jab at you, but the reality of the development world. You'll feel lost a LOT. Finally a video on bash/cmd, as it's an important part of interacting with git, packages and your operating system. If treehouse already has some of these videos, maybe attach them to my post. To give treehouse a bone, it gets more and more difficult to make straightforward videos as you go into intermediate and advanced topics. They don't know if you're working in react, or angular, or c# or you know what, or if you're working in this text editor or that text editor, or writing in es5 or es6, or using grunt or gulp or webpack or npm or yarn or bower...it's crazy! Hang in there. Happy coding. The more you learn, the more you realize that it isn't such a straight path, and that is ok. Just do it everyday.

Hi Guys,

just wanted to throw in some comments with my thoughts. I have completed about 70% of the full stack JavaScript track so far and felt that the 'build a simple dynamic site with node.js' was not a good course at all. This was the first time I felt a bit lost, interestingly, many core concepts covered in this course are explained in Express basics course as well which I understood 100%. For example, the code block which sets up a route is explained in a much better way and more in depth in the express basics course than in 'build a simple dynamic site' course.

This led me to wonder If it would've been better to have express basics in the FS JS track before 'build a simple dynamic site using node.js' because of the way in which things are explained. I also don't understand why object oriented JavaScript is coming so late in the track. OOJ should really be immediately after the loops/arrays course. Additionally, the build a dynamic site course should be broken in two with core concepts explained more in depth with examples.

But things are again going smooth for me from the express basics course onwards.

Leave a comment if you have any thoughts, I'll be interested in knowing..

CheerS!

I've had an on/off relationship with treehouse for nearly 4 years. There are definitely teachers that suit some students and not others. I've tried python for a long while, then gave up on it later. Now I'm doing JS and started many courses for FEWD, React and have gone through them with a better understanding than ever. What I found is that it's not just the treehouse content that you have to depend on, you have to make your own strategies on what you need to be a developer in whatever field. Here are my own tips you may find useful:

As good as treehouse can be, I learn and consolidate my understanding by using other sources, like the sololearn app, codeacademy, youtube and just now starting codeschool.

I also either create or update a website project with new content that I've learnt. Keeping notes for each language I know, little tips and tricks are also useful to me. Copy and paste code you've learnt into your notes so you can add things easy when making a new project.

As easy as it may be to breeze through some courses, which there are a lot of, I actually slow myself down. I never finish a 2 hour or longer course in a day, I'd rather do one module each from 3 courses (3 different languages) than 3 modules from one course. This helps me because I can forget almost as quickly as I learn, and doing a course over 2 days is more helpful than in a single day.

And lastly, plough through the boring/dry stuff, in JS I found that jQuery was a lot more fun to learn. In CSS, grid and flexbox layouts made everything easy and fun. So the intermediate components are much more fun because the tools make the mundane basic components oftentimes no longer necessary and more appreciative of how good things are.

Hope this helps.

following...

Hi James,

I can somewhat relate and am disappointed to hear this because I was planning on doing the Js track next. Im doing the Frontend track at the moment and similar things happened with bootstrap course and was very frustrating (I ended up skipping it) but they are releasing an update soon seemed pretty quick so Im happy to go back when that is out.

Ive used digitaltutors, pluralsight, lynda and fcc but have found treehouse the best by miles. My advice is to send them an email and find out if they are updating the course you had problems with, they seem very good at getting back.

I'd be interested to see what they come back to you with.

Okay :)

I'll write only one thing, not going to write all the reasons.

TeamTreehouse is one of the best that's out there - even if you think they are crap. Let's compare.

College updates their lecture every 4-20years. You pay 100k+ CodeAcademy is just syntax basics FFC is text based, it's okay... once you know the basics and stuff later on. THey all update every few years.

Teamtreehouse updates as soon as they can. Which makes them the best + they have a lot of videos.

Plus slightly outdate courses are good, at least you practice and gain real life skill by solving them. As in real life you will need to update the code if it get's outdated, so I would re-inforce teamtreehouse to keep some older courses just for learning purposes, so the code can break slightly, even though the whole 97% of the application code is all valid.

I love Treehouse, at least for all things Front-end. If you have trouble following the material, try other online schools and see -- it's much worse for beginners. Every time I have something new to learn, the first thing I do is check Treehouse Library to see if it's hopefully covered there. If it is, I'm super happy because it's the best introduction to a new topic. From there, I just go on my own to continue learning.

My only complaint is that courses are not updated fast enough.

Yes

I really like Andrew's courses. They make me think and give me an idea how real developers operate. He is good at explaining complex concepts and I really like his sense of humor. :) I like when he makes a mistake or has to debug things because I learn how he does it when it happens to me. Every time I felt lost, I had to re-watch the course units and I felt more confident in the end because I had to figure things out by myself a bit, which is real learning.

I always supplement my learning in Treehouse by reading documentation etc outside the course, but Treehouse courses are usually my entry point for any topic, they just give such a great gib picture.

However, it IS helpful to read shay r's comments about the better sequence of courses. I also really liked reading Gabbie Metheny's later comment after she tool all those other courses and came back to this track. Great job!

P.S. I also want to add that I do have an experience being completely lost with courses outside Treehouse, and that's why I love Treehouse so much. For example, I started my Front-end learning with Udacity, and even though I still recommend Udacity in specific ways, it was really tough and confusing. The gaps between courses and assignments were huge and a lot of people, including me, gave up.