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General Discussion

Willie Suggs
PLUS
Willie Suggs
Courses Plus Student 5,879 Points

Is treehouse truly enough to make me more then just a person that knows very little about a lot?

I've been coding for about a year, I started with treehouse which was great for actually breaking me in to program but I was merely learning syntax. I've done free code camp, codecademy and just about every other novice coding platform. I finally realized that NONE of this stuff was going to actually make me job ready, so I started looking into coding bootcamps. After passing my coding audition neither skill fund or climb would fund me, so here I am trying to make myself a fullstack javascript developer. Im worried that I'll be like I wont be able to find the in depth knowledge that I need to obtain my goals here or even on the internet. It seems like you always get a piece of something your looking for but never enough to actually grow. At this rate it'll take me 10yrs lol...any insight would be great

MODERATOR EDIT: changed Topic of post to "General Discussion" as it does not pertain to specific Treehouse content.

10 Answers

Peter Vanderlind de Oliveira
Peter Vanderlind de Oliveira
7,376 Points

Hi, I think you probably know more about code than I do.

Man, the really cool dreams can't simply be handed down, you know? I'm Brazilian, the economy sucks, and I don't live in a big city. What does it mean? I'm gonna have to make my own opportunities. Try reaching out to entrepreneurship lectures, because if you wait for someone to help you achieve your dream, I think you're gonna take more than just ten years.

Try to execute your projects.

Well, I hope I didn't disappoint you, I don't really have the answer though.

In my opinion, Treehouse gives you the tools, and you have to use them. Like Peter said, execute a project. Pick from one of the categories you know a little about, and create your own project. You'll learn so much putting something together. I'm not sure if you're a part of any of the tech degree programs here, but I feel it has helped piece together my knowledge. It may help you with the same.

Willie Suggs
Willie Suggs
Courses Plus Student 5,879 Points

this is the thing, if I teach some one how to build a simple todo list web app its only so much you can do with those concepts, build it in vanilla javascript, build it with jquery, build it with angular.js and so on, but at the core your playing around with the same funtionality. So your probably thinking well build something harder, and to that I reply its kinda like some one teaching you how to build a car but they've only taught you how to change the oil, oil filter, and air filter, but now you want to rebuild engines and swap transmissions but everything they show you is light weight like oil, oil filter, and air filter. I can hear someone saying "well teach yourself, just read the documentation on anything you want to learn" well yeah that helps but it still won't get you to the point where you're building whole projects frontend-backend...

I can definitely relate to this. I've been on Treehouse for years (since a sr. in high school), and I love it (even was a moderator at that time); but it's not enough content to make you anything besides maybe a junior developer. If it wasn't for the techdegree, I probably would still have my account paused. Without having projects, I felt treehouse to be a bit pointless useless after a while. I've been looking at a bootcamp to do over the summer, so I can perhaps land some work before I graduate from college. Fullstack Academy is here where I live, and seems to be reputable, so I applied. This was about a year ago, and I failed the admissions process. I'll say, without taking some CS classes I probably wouldn't have been able to answer any questions. Treehouse will not prepare you for those sort of assessments. I do recommend the techdegree, but I also suggest some books like "Eloquent Javascript," the "You Don't Know JS" series," and perhaps the CS50x course on EdX. Doing some katas on CodeWars will definitely help as well. Also, Hack Reactor is offering free prep courses that look fairly good. If you're not a Techdegree student, I feel Treehouse lacks the ability of showing you how the material you've studied can transition into a useful project; or perhaps lacks the ability to give direction to projects that may be good for a student to try to tackle. I've also been tempted to join Udacity's program since a lot of their material seems a bit more in depth. Overall though, I don't feel comfortable in either fullstack program ability to prepare me for a related career when compared to a bootcamp. That's why I plan on reapplying to Fullstack Academy after doing some prep courses.

Here's a good path I found: https://forum.freecodecamp.com/t/computer-guide-computer-science-and-web-development-comprehensive-path/64470

Also, I've been looking for someone to do collaborative projects with. If you'd be interested, let me know in a reply here or on one of my social media outlets linked on my profile.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON A BOOTCAMP. I repeat DO NO waste your money on a bootcamp.

Also, how can you say it doesn't prepare you to be job ready, when people have used treehouse, freecodecamp, etc to land jobs?

That makes no sense.

Also I think you have these unrealistic expectations of thinking you have to know EVERYTHING for a company to even take a chance on you. You don't. All you need are the basics. So much more you are going to learn on the job, and as a developer your education is lifetime. Unless you want to be that guy left behind.

To add to it too if you haven't started studying php and mysql, start. So many companies use php, and having that under your belt is a huge leg up for you. No, it doesn't mean you'll be stuck with php. But I am saying the easiest way to get into the industry right now is having it under your belt.

Ultimately I think you are lacking confidence.

Willie Suggs
Willie Suggs
Courses Plus Student 5,879 Points

EVERY job listing I see is wants 2 or more years experience and a CS degree. I know, the way around that is a good portfolio(people just want to know can you actually build), but In my opinion a good portfolio isn't copied and pasted projects. A good portfolio is projects you've completed yourself from wire frames to the finished application....Now as far as php, trust I hear you, but what about node.js. IDK, I was thinking that javascript full stack developers my be more dominant in the up coming years based off the fact that the whole stack is JS. I imagine it would be pretty impossible not to be good at front and back-end when your simply using your core language with other libraries and frameworks...My road of learning won't stop at JS full stack but I think Its a good starting look...

Also to pimp another course that would be well worth your time, look up colt steele's web developer bootcamp at udemy. Well, well worth it. Also look up a course called javascript understanding the weird parts.

Yes, I LOVE treehouse but am a big believer in not just using it to be a well developer.

Peter Vanderlind de Oliveira
Peter Vanderlind de Oliveira
7,376 Points

You know what would be cool? If TreeHouse had open source (obviously) code tournaments.

I think that sort of thing would fill the gap for more complex projects. But you can try youtube tutorials, there are some really cool channels out there.

Dude, they ALL say they want a degree, x years of experience, every programming language under the sun. Here's the not so dirty little secret though, all those requirements are a wish list and more importantly they use it as a way to weed out people not confident in their abilities. Ok? Apply anyhow!

LBS?

Steven Ventimiglia
Steven Ventimiglia
27,371 Points

After two decades, as a professional since the mid-90s, Treehouse is easily my go-to for things I feel need to be refined within my skill set, as well as where I end up when I need to learn something new and/or trendy.

This industry always changes, so we need to change with it. No educational class will ever "make you" anything, they only prepare you by introducing the various tools and approaches of how something can be accomplished.

I've always been a person that would grab a JS snippet, edit, and plop it into a project I was using. However, I never went deep into understanding it. I was always more of an HTML/CSS person. Now I play with JS, based on the courses here.

I did this on Codepen.io, out of fun. Because opening myself up to learning more about a fundamental skill set is like unboxing a puzzle... and now it's game time.

http://codepen.io/StevenVentimiglia/pen/RVGeQr

I even threw myself into various HTML/CSS courses... even as someone who knew it extremely well. When I completed them, there was always something I took away.

"Refactoring" is always mentioned as a way of improving code. I feel as if we should always be interesting in refactoring ourselves and our abilities to devour and digest things we may have forgotten or ignored in the past. There's a strength in understanding something better than you did - especially when it comes to design and development.

Alfred Colmenares
Alfred Colmenares
789 Points

Be more confident in your skills learned and get in a company. The rest will come at the job.