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JavaScript AngularJS An Introduction to Two-Way Data Binding What About Lists?

Alan Fidelino
Alan Fidelino
12,846 Points

Course Difficulty

Is it just me or the course for Angular is quite confusing in terms of structure and content? All that sticks to me in these lessons are "don't worry about that for now, we'll look more into that in a later video..."

I think Alex is a great instructor, but 4 hours is not enough to cover the basics of the course. A lot of the topics have not been explained fully before proceeding to complex materials or topics. I like the course, but I am not getting it fully from this course unlike the others that I finished.

Jason Saba
Jason Saba
Courses Plus Student 3,862 Points

As just about everyone else has said Alex keeps saying that he'll "reference the syntax that a later time", but then never goes back over those VERY necessary parts. I've been able to comprehend just about every Javascript course on treehouse with ease with exception to this one. There are key elements to certain functionalities that just simply aren't being explained.

To be real honest, each and every course on Treehouse is taught with the utmost care for the details like your a third-grader with exception to this one.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person who feels like this particular course it just glazing over the subject matter with the assumption that you have the intricate knowledge of the nitty-gritty details of the framework.

Treehouse, if you're reading this, I really don't mean to be rude to Alex, and Alex if your reading this, I'm sorry man, but PLEASE RE-RECORD THIS COURSE, and focus on the smallest details. Keep it linear, don't skip stuff assuming we know, and please, talk to me like I'm stupid like every other course does on this site. That really DOES help to engrain the subject matter in our heads.

Additionally, please keep the examples linear too, there are things being added to each workspace that aren't being explained. Which ends up leaving us to question what is going on. Underscore? Hallo? Why are these being introduced before you teach the fundamentals of Angular itself?

16 Answers

Marty Hitchcock
Marty Hitchcock
13,108 Points

It's not just you. Personally I think it needs a lot more animations and diagrams to illustrate the concepts better. I found it too hard to follow and then looked elsewhere and am now coming back to it as I think it would be a good for reiterating the core concepts and covering a few extra bases.

I would highly reccomend checking out these:

  1. Shaping up with Angular JS - It is free and everything I was hoping the treehouse lessons would be. Very similar to Treehouse with video lessons and code challenges, but Treehouse for life though.
  2. AngularJS Fundamentals In 60-ish Minutes - I found this one very interesting and it made me get a lot of the concepts a lot better.
Alan Fidelino
Alan Fidelino
12,846 Points

Thanks Marty,

I think the instructor of this course knows the material very well but he needs to scale it down for beginners like the other instructors as the concepts and information he is trying to teach are too complex and he gave no time for students to absorb it first before moving to new items.

Jesus! I though I was the only one that could not follow the classes.

All I hear is blablabla directive, blablabla model, blablabla pipeline, 2 way binding and.... most of all.... "Don't worry about it right now..." and then it gets really complex. including hallo and other stuff..

Really? The sensation I got from this course is that this guy was just showing of.

Unfortunately this is the first time I feel unsatisfied with treehouse class and I'll have to check for resources elsewhere :(

Vince Varga
Vince Varga
15,283 Points

I also found this course really confusing and difficult to follow, as the teacher always says that "Don't worry about the syntax for now", then I was just asked for the syntax and everything in the code challenge. I think in order to be able to use Angular is a real life project, one just have to know syntax as well, not just the concept behind a framework. I can also recommend you guys the 60-ish Minutes youtube video, they start from scratch and then add everything step-by-step.

Vince Varga
Vince Varga
15,283 Points

As I keep seeing new comments at this post, I would like to help you to get started with AngularJS.

I was studying Physics and thanks to my Team Treehouse subscription I could change my profession and obtain a job as a web developer and I feel confident enough to basically start any project that I had dreamt of (currently working on some of my ideas after work). I have been a Treehouse member for about half a year now and I can assure you that the content you get here is always easy to digest, actually this course was the first (and the only) course that I just couldn't follow at all, no matter how hard I tried to.

AngularJS is a great JavaScript framework, I love it and at my job we use it for every project we have, so if you plan to develop web applications I (and many other developers) can definitely recommend it, in my opinion it's worth to invest your time in Angular.

There are a couple of GitHub repositories out there that are basically links to AngularJS articles. I would start with AngularJS-Resources by JonathanZWhite (mentioned here at 2:30), then AngularJS-Learning by Jim Cunningham if you still have unanswered questions.

One of the great articles at ng-newsletter was also recommended in the Treehouse Show Ep. 81 (6:10). Other article that has been also presented by Nick Pettit and Jason Seifer (around 9:00). This article was also recommended (at 6:54).

Note: the Treehouse Show is awesome and maybe some of the TH students don't even know about it.

Once you get the idea and get confused with all the new concepts, be sure to read through Gil Fink's AngularJS Essentials. It helps a lot after you read a bit about Angular, but got confused about the terms and concepts.

If you are willing to pay for quality content, I can recommend AngularJS Essentials by Rodrigo Branas for beginners, in the book the writer starts from zero and introduces the most important features that Angular provides.

To quickly get started with the whole JavaScript stack after you fall in love with Angular, Node.js, MongoDB and AngularJS Web Development by Brad Dayley book is great, MongoDB, Node.js, Express, AngularJS, with tons of real world examples (sample here).

Karl Taylor
Karl Taylor
4,043 Points

Really grateful for your recent post with other places to learn Angular! I will definitely be checking them out.

John Keith Zank
John Keith Zank
11,848 Points

I honestly wouldn't mind if they had an entire track dedicated to complicated frameworks like Angular considering the difficulty of understanding MVC in it's entirety for new students and even those who've had some experience. I've actually put this Angular course to the side for two months while I took some Angular courses from Pluralsight and this course is just now starting to click in my head.

If not an entire track then at least two or three different courses, a beginner one focusing on the basics of MVC, next on directives, and last one perhaps a small project. Even after the Pluralsight course and this one I still am not sure how to structure my js files. I have a great project I want to do but I don't think I could effectively utilize Angular to build it.

Carol Leung
Carol Leung
802 Points

I totally agree and also found this course quite difficult to follow and also quite challenging when doing the quiz. I think it needs to be scale down for a beginning indeed. I've watched Angular videos from https://egghead.io/technologies/angularjs and found them much better for beginners.

Artur Stepaniuk
Artur Stepaniuk
3,862 Points

I kinda feel the same way and I'm not new to angular, mostly self thought but atm im working on 2 projects on angular and i was hopping to refresh my knowledge and see maybe im doing something wrong, im in the middle of this curse, but it strikes me how much time i spent during "halo" part, if you ask for my 2 cents i think those lessons need to be longer, and with more basic information like other lessons. Considering angular 2 comming and where angularJS is no this is clearly not a subject that should be taken lately i hope you guys will hear feedback and make those lessons a bit more accessible

Karl Taylor
Karl Taylor
4,043 Points

Unfortunately I am beginning to feel same however I was just unsure I wasn't taking it all in properly. I will keep going for a couple more videos/challenges but might have to find elsewhere to learn Angular. I'm new to Treehouse but I hope other tracks are not like this and the way you guys say they are.

It's understandable some tracks could be hard, but surely there's a difference between being hard and not taking in all the right information! Whether it be the student or the teachers fault!

Duarte Monteiro
Duarte Monteiro
22,300 Points

Glad I'm not the only one! I think this course needs a 'big picture' preview of what can do angular, start of more slowly and like said before, more animation and illustration of the concept before hand, before getting into the specifics. I was finding it impossible to understand but once I saw some of the posted links here it all started to make sense.

Josh Copeland
Josh Copeland
11,346 Points

The below link is to one of the best videos to learn Angular. Introduction to Angular.js in 50 Examples (part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRrL5j3MIvo

Come back to this one afterwards. This course got way too complicated too quickly.

apapatp
apapatp
1,887 Points

To be honest I started watching this series but I think I will stop and head over to egg.io teaching on angular. Right now I'm confused around some concepts.

I would voice the same as above. I find this very confusing to follow and I find the structure confusing too as it varies massively from tutorial to tutorial but I definitely think it could be structured a little better. It's a shame as there is a limit amount of Angular on Treehouse so I have to go elsewhere to find my fix.

Jakub Golan
PLUS
Jakub Golan
Courses Plus Student 28,393 Points

I have to agree with the above comments. I have been doing treehouse courses for the past year and I have never had any trouble following them, that is until I hit on the Angular.js course. From my point of view it is missing some basic structure and starts from the middle without explaining any of the basic concepts and building blocks. I usually jump between treehouse courses and codeschool.com and I have to say that their free course on Angular will give you a much better understanding of the basics. https://www.codeschool.com/courses/shaping-up-with-angular-js

jrabello
jrabello
17,917 Points

Alex Vanston has a good knowlegde of AngularJs, but that's not enough for people to learn it, teachers need to develop a good teaching methodology to make people to understand things, from very basic to advanced, and this wasn't done at all!

I think It would be better to remove this course and make another one covering things in a more proper way, I mean, He starts talking about directives with hallo? using underscore? seriously? How can someone start learning Integrals without seen Limits in Mathematics?

I've added to this thread 3 months ago with the same disappointment as everyone else. The course is indeed not meant for beginners.

However, 3 months have passed and I started scavenging the web for information on how to do some stuff with angular. I began a new portfolio site using angular as a way to learn and practice on a real world project.

Don't get me wrong, It was hard. I've opened countless stackoverflow questions and I learned from each one of them. I'm even using angular on my day job now doing some cool stuff like multistep forms with validation and loading different content for each step depending on the previous choices.

I've tried watching this course again and I could follow along easily. I think the teacher went a little too far introducing Hallo (that has nothing to do with angular btw) and make everyone confused.

What I suggest is trying to grasp the basic concept of scope, directives and services. Look for that information on google and angularjs documentation and try to understand how it works. After you think you kind of understand it, try making something. Try rewriting your own website using angularjs with ng-route, ng-animate and stuff.

You WILL have some trouble making it all make sense and work. When that time comes, post on stackoverflow or on this forum and someone will help and explain why things are the way they are. You can also tag me on your question and I'll try to help you to the best of my abilities.

Of course, this is no excuse. The course is really not for beginners. They should remake this. What I'm trying to say, not everything is lost. Follow the tips I gave and try again when you feel confident.

Alex Lumierre
Alex Lumierre
11,010 Points

well the angular.js website really provides a very good documentation (i.e. https://docs.angularjs.org/api ) . And all the concept can be understand by reading those. but then again, it easier to watch than reading... that's why we come here...

jason chan
jason chan
31,009 Points

this is not beginners course this is a. This course is so confusing.....