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chris salvi
7,584 Pointsis a PRO account worth the extra cost?
I am coming up on my renewal and I definitely want to resubscribe, but I wanted to get some opinions from users on whether the PRO account really justifies the extra expenses. THANKS!
6 Answers
Brennan Agranoff
14,041 PointsI really like my pro account, I recommend it.
chris salvi
7,584 Pointscan you give me some reasons why?
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsmy main concern is they have been focusing on too much beginners material lately. I know it's a difficult balance and they have to please everyone, but it'd be nice to see a new course in my language of preference, ruby & javascript, every 2 months or so. I dont want to be a jack of all trades master of none type guy, and I am debating about whether I should go for PRO or save some of the money and for example do the Pragmatic Studios courses on Rails which I hear are excellent.
Adama Sy
7,076 Pointsthey are not focusing on beginners, they are making things better for people to undestand it . When you start a project, you plan it, you complete it, then you perfect it. Treehouse is perfecting the projects they started. Also I have access to library with my account and have my video in my itune feed, so i can watch whatever offline anytime. I travel in the plane so this is good fo me to have those video, and also a great bank of code example
chris salvi
7,584 Pointswhen I say focusing on beginners, I mean that a lot of the code modules lately have been their offshoot catered to high schoolers. I forget what the modules are called, but they've had a slew of them lately in javascript in html. I cant recall the last time I've seen a new javascript lesson posted, same for Ruby.
Here is an example that frustrates me. Ruby is now on 2.1.2 and Rails is in 4.1.x and yet I have not heard any mentioning from Jason Schiefer about updating the treehouse app to be compatible with these new releases. The videos are actually quite outdated due to reliance on Rails 3.x, and already there is talk about Rails 5.0 coming out sometime next year. As someone who wants to focus on Rails this can be quite frustrating for me.
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris,
Jason does go over updating your Rudy on Rails installation via a workshop which can be viewed with a PRO account. This is another reason why having a PRO account is so beneficial. But like I said before, you can only tell if the transition is worth it; but without trying it out for a month (at least) you will not know for sure..
Cheers!
chris salvi
7,584 PointsI thought that was only for the ODOT app not the treebook app.
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris,
The concepts are there even if it's for a different app. The same rule should apply regardless.
Cheers!
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsok, well I think I will try for a month and see how it goes. I hope someone at treehouse sees my question however as I think we are all addressing some larger scale issues as the company continues to grow. Amount of content is good, but spreading yourself thin isnt desirable, and I will be sorely disappointed if I only see new Ruby videos once every 4 months, especially since the last ruby release was basically a rehash of concepts that were provided in another tutorial.
David Lopez
3,211 Pointsi Have a pro account and unfortunately i really havent used it as much as i would have liked to. im not so much concerned about any help finding a better job as it will usually be your "soft skills" and your network that will actually do the heavy lifting when it comes to finding a job. treehouse does indeed offer their support and they do generate job leads for you, but ultimately it IS up to you... and your skill set.
with that said, i love treehouse because of the flexibility it gives me to practice the skills that are relevant to my current growth. ill give you an example of my situation.
i decided to go back to school to earn an Associates Degree in Computer Programming: Mobile Application Development at my local community college. basically, the brick and mortar version of everything on treehouse. I earned an A last semester in my Intro to C++ class because I was light years ahead of everyone else in the class because I learned how to write functions, build Arrays, create conditional statements all inside of Treehouse.
This semester I am in a Data Base Design & Modeling Class. The teacher has gone on and on about his impressive resume for three weeks without any real instruction and everyone in the class is lost. I, on the other hand, have access to treehouse's database foundations track and i already know how to create tables using MySQL statements, create queries, and run reports. Now that the professor is discussing complex ideas that loses everyone, I can keep up with him and I am the only one in class that asks intelligent questions...
treehouse will add value to your skill set. how much and how fast really depends on you and your motivation and desire to succeed.
Ill be renewing my yearly membership. just saying, treehouse is worth it...
chris salvi
7,584 PointsI know treehouse is worth it, that is not my contention. I will be reupping my subscription no doubt, but my main issue is whether to go with pro or regular subscription and whether the price of PRO is justified for someone who is now venturing into more intermediate concepts.
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris,
I would say that, at least, trying a month of the PRO account would be of your best interest. Basically what you'll get is access to their workshops on the very things your are working on in basics: One Page WordPress Site, Rapid Website Prototyping, How to use Google Analytics, and Building Mobile Web Apps with Ratchet just to name a few. You'll also get access to view all of the interviews that Treehouse has done with some of the industry's most prominent figures. That along with Treehouse Conferences and bonus videos like Quick Tips, Website Reviews, and in-depth Master Class series on some of the language and techniques you will be using in your web career.
In my opinion there isn't a negative reason not to try the PRO upgrade for one month. You can always downgrade your account if you are not satisfied. You will only know for sure if you will like something by trying it and upgrading your account (if only for a month) should give you the time to try out everything PRO has to offer. REMEMBER: you can always downgrade your account to basic if you are not satisfied; but try it and I'm sure you'll like it.
Cheers!
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsso I could theoretically try for one month and they wont charge me the $500 year fee? This must be new...
Adama Sy
7,076 Points@salvi is right on videos outdated. I give him that Because I would like html 5 videos course. Because it is the future. HTML 5 how to work with it.
chris salvi
7,584 PointsId like to give a practical example. I thought I was getting quite good at js, enough to apply to the hacker school in SF, but I didnt get in because they sideswiped me with a ton of questions on callback functions, an area Im weak in despite reading a decent amount on js.
It'd be really really nice to have some JS classes that implement closures and callback functions in a practical setting while building a project, yet I havent found any on the site yet. Moreover it'd be great if this site could help assist meto the level of knowledge to have a shot of getting into one of the more prestigious code academies.
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris,
The last time I checked, you can pay monthly. Of course it's been a while since I signed up. I would believe that you will have the option to pay at a monthly rate even if you are paying for the basics in yearly intervals. If you have problems, send a email to the support staff here.
Cheers!
Adama Sy
7,076 Pointschris you can pause, downgrade, cancel your account anytime.
And another thing, i'm not only using treehouse i bough lots of books to support my knowledge as treehouse can't teach you all
chris salvi
7,584 Points@adama they actually do cover HTML5 & CSS3 extensively in the web design track, but to build the type of new agey cool sites it requires extensive knowledge of js and its libraries, which is why I am slightly frustrated
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris & everyone,
Please keep in mind that, yes, some of the videos are a little bit out of date. That's one of the downfalls on teaching a technology that constantly changes over time. Treehouse is in the process of redoing all of their old content that's currently on their site. It is going to take a while (it will not happen overnight). You can look at their future videos and see all the new videos they have planned.
Cheers!
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsthat is true, and I dont mean to sound angry, but merely asking where I should spend my money. I think it is cool that treehouse will release videos on swift and it seems they have many planned, but that is a language that isnt even out of beta.
How do we consumers know when the older videos will be updated, and how can we be reassured that stuff like ruby and js wont get eclipsed by endless tutorials on wordpress (which doesnt interest me)? Those seem like fair questions as a consumer.
Adama Sy
7,076 Pointschris salvi l if it does not interest you, it may interest others, right? you can't just want them to make videos for you. there is about 20000 people if not more coming here to learn . and many of them use Wordpress. So be patient I believe, you should be patient
Shawn Gregory
Courses Plus Student 40,672 PointsChris,
Treehouse loves to take student's ideas on future videos. If you see a certain type of addon of a language or see that they are way behind on a certain language, simply contact the Treehouse teacher that teaches that course or contact Treehouse directly and they'll get back to you. It doesn't hurt to ask and who knows, with enough students asking for the same thing, it may trump a video series they were planning to do.
Cheers!
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsmakes good sense, and Im sorry if I sound perturbed about the wordpress onslaught of late. I just dont really understand how the person who handles wordpress courses can be so productive while the other courses go stagnant for periods of times.
Overall this site is barnone the best place to learn about coding on the internet. I just have some minor gripes as a user. And yes patience is great, except when in costs $100s of dollars haha
chris salvi
7,584 Pointsand to prove my fidelity to this site, I just signed up for a PRO account for one month to test drive it. Cheers treehouse.
PS does anyone know how to tag people in posts?
Adam N
70,280 Points@ symbol then start typing the person's name
chris salvi
7,584 PointsJason Seifer any word on new ruby courses for the Fall?
chris salvi
7,584 Pointschris salvi
7,584 Pointsfor example, im curious whether treehouse will help me find a job better if I subscribe to a pro account. That would be a nice value added type incentive. I live in PDX so it shouldnt be hard for them theoretically. They are established in the tech community here.