Have to tell you, not enjoying the Sass basics course

Hmmm... I actually did really like the Sass course.

Hi Arthur,

I'm sure it's going to be a quicker and more effitiant way to write CSS but the course on Treehouse does not seem to be structured as well as the other Treehouse courses.

I've learnt more on the Treehouse blog within two minutes then I've learnt on the course so far.

I'll just need to seek out other resources until I get it because the way Hampton has described it so far has lost me.

Once you understand Sass it really is awesome, and it's concepts will most likely be the future of CSS. With that being said, understanding Sass requires some basic understanding of programming concepts. Take the programming and JavaScript basics courses then come back to this course again and see if your perception has changed at all :-)

I'm with Ian.

Just starting out, having a hard time passing the quizzes because I don't understand the syntax, the teacher's moving a bit too fast for me & sometimes refers to what he's talking about as simply 'this'. He doesn't break down what he's talking about as slowly and eloquently as Jim or Andrew.

Installing Sass on windows was a hassle. The cmd line is unfamiliar to a person going down the front end developer track. I hear nothing but good things about Sass on the internet, but what does it say about Sass when I have to learn about why I should use it, from the guy who created it, as opposed to a treehouse teacher?

Maybe it's just because I'm not good at it right now. That's the reason I didn't like taking Ceramics 1 in college. But as of right now, I'd much rather repeat myself when coding CSS. Coming from a graphic design background, the tedium isn't exactly killing me.

So many things (steps) were left out of the initial modules it made it very difficult to follow along. I agree it is a super efficient way of writing CSS, although I'm not sure of the wisdom of adding this to a track that has just taught me to write CSS. I think it is more of an advanced topic that you could choose to do once you were comfortable writing CSS.

I'm continuing with the next modules (Mixins etc) and this so far seems easier to follow. I think Treehouse need to review the first modules in this course with a view to improving it.

I see your point. It does not appear that Hampton is a seasoned teacher, but he does know his stuff. Once you get through the course I think you will have a better grasp of the content. At least there is either a quiz or code challenge after every video, unlike some other treehouse courses. This is a must, in my opinion.

I agree with the people above. I cannot even get sass to work. It is installed, I use the --watch command but nothing compiles. There are numerous ppl on this forum with the same issue but no one has been given a solution. I sent an email to tech support about this and it was ignored. Out of all the courses this has the least support

I'm really enjoying the course and haven't had any struggle at all. He's made it a little more fun and engaging. There's really no one better to teach this course than Hampton Catlin since he is actually the creator of Sass..

Brad Woods: The only thing I can suggest on your issue with the --watch command is to make sure you are in the correct directory in your command line and then run --watch . Not forgetting that . at the end of --watch is important because that tells it to watch here.

Wil Goolsby: My directory syntax is correct. I think the issue is with windows 7 64-bit. I found that I can get Sass to work if the directory my scss files are in are not on the desktop.

I have to tell you I completely agree with Caroline and Ian. I really like the Treehouse courses and have learned a lot but I think this course should be scripted better. It seems to be really hard to follow and it's killing me because I have to finish it to complete the track! I am reading another reference as a supplement "Sass and Compass for Designers" that I got on Amazon. It's a great reference.

I posted this as part of a response on another Sass question (regarding the second part of the code challenge for Working With Media Queries), but thought it relevant here:

"I have this feeling that I would love Sass if I could just the hang of it but this course just doesn't seem to be clicking with me for some reason. But then, sometimes it seems like what's in the code challenges isn't what was covered in the video. Like how to add orientation to a media query, for example. I had the idea but didn't know the precise code until I checked out the Sass-Lang site site. That was after I'd checked through all three of the Sass books I have- which includes Hampton's own book, Pragmatic Guide to Sass. Every single one talked about max-width like he did in the video which I knew wouldn't work. Sometimes Hampton reminds me of some of my old profs- extremely knowledgeable about his subject (& certainly very engaging) but not always the best at breaking things down to a beginner's level. On the other hand, I'm a design person & don't think like an engineer at all, so it might be a translation issue. (At an old job of mine, we used to joke that "Engineer" was an entirely different language from normal English.) :-D"

Along with Hampton's Pragmatic Guide to Sass, I also picked up A Book Apart's Sass for Web Designers as well as Sass & Compass in Action. Once I get through the Treehouse course, I'm planning on going through the books more thoroughly to see if I can get a better grasp on it. Thus far, both Hampton's book & the A Book Apart book have answered some of my previous questions. Maybe I should have gone through the books first but I usually learn more by doing.