Issues with Jim Hoskins Programming course

If your trying to learn javascript from it, then yes you won't learn much. But that's not the point of the course; The point is to teach the basics, that apply to all languages. Such as loops, variables, arrays, etc. I personally did not learn a whole lot; but that was because I already knew most of it. I think Jim explains it well though.

I think the thing is every one has a different teaching style and everyone has a different learning style and they do not always mesh well. I have nothing against Jim Hoskins, and I am sure he knows his Java script and programming well, it just seems like he doesn't know how to teach it well. Granted Javascript and all programming languages are complex but a good teacher takes something complex and breaks it down and makes it easy to understand, they do the work so you don't have to. I find that after a vid with Jim Hoskins I am having to break this down in to small chunks and make sense of what he says plus do extra background reading and research , and sometimes he contradicts himself by calling something one thing and then 2 secs later calls it something else. Which I find frustrating especially when learning a subject where syntactic correctness is important.

I find that rather than illuminating the subject of Javascript he over complicates it.Which leaves you the student having to do extra work to really understand what is going on.

I had a good anatomy teacher once and he said if you are teaching a complex subject you have to imagine you are teaching it to children , because if you can explain it in a way a child would understand, then anyone will understand it.And I have always found that to be true.

Unfortunately It would be great if we had a teacher for this subject that makes learning it a breeze but I have found that sometimes you have to suck it up and work with a persons way of doing things even if there is a better way of doing/teaching something and just work hard until you get it- its not that you can't learn from Jim its that you have to work at learning, I'm sure treehouse gave us their best guy, so it could be worse , it could be someone who makes Jims teaching style seem easy to get along with!

Niger Hall,

I totally agree with the other answers.

In kind of a contradiction to your case I actually find the class kind of boring because he goes in a lot of details but that is due to the fact that, while new to JavaScript I already knew some programming in Python and had a semester of FORTRAN back in college and had taught myself QuickBasic during High School so for somebody that already understands the concepts it's fairly easy but if you are totally new to programming embrace those temporary moments of having no idea what is being taught, you will soon miss them.

Good luck.

I would agree with Erik it's definitely not an easy subject to pickup for most. I'm currently learning JavaScript, and am following a course/roadmap from a site called JavaScript is sexy. It works alongside two well known printed books as reference materials, and also the basic JavaScript course on Codecademy. I am following this plan in conjunction with the front end development track here, and I'm finding it's slowly coming together. We are all different in how we learn, just got to find what works best and stick with it. I'm on a phone at minute, but if you want that link I can supply it or you could Google "learn JavaScript properly" and I believe it's top ranked. Good luck.

Hi Niger,

If you aren't already, try to follow along with the examples. Programming is definitely a hard concept to grasp right away.

The purpose in these videos is more to teach basic concepts that all programming languages share, such as arrays, loops, if/then statements and so forth.

Obviously, understanding what's going on is much more preferable, which is why it is good to follow along.

If you've taken the course on making a website, then you can leverage that knowledge to follow along. You just need to create a .js file, link it in your index.html header, and put the code you see Jim typing in, into your .js file to follow along. Alternatively, there's this site that makes writing code super fast for following along: http://jsfiddle.net/ You would just put the javascript in the javascript box, make sure you can see your browser's console, then click "Run".

I hope this helps :-)

i just pause my membership because of this, i can't understand him, im glad to hear that is not only me, he is so slow some times, and with a vocal issue that for a person how is not native american speaker. is been really difficult. good luck with learning JavaScript friends!

I have found Jim's videos to be pretty good. As several others have mentioned understanding the basic logic structures in programming requires pulling together a mix of very logical, systematic, black and white thinking and very abstract, intangible concepts to produce something that, at this point, amounts to a couple of lines printed out in the console of a browser. I agree that the Web Design Track is a great place to start as it helps to begin working through some of the abstractness of all of it. That being said the mindset between designing and programming is different. The development and programming is almost completely focused on behaviors instead of content or appearance. I'm not saying one is better or more difficult that the other, but the thinking and mindset are different. In defense of Jim and his lessons, his teaching is very similar to teachers I had in college (BS in Computer Engineering Technology). I have heard and said all of the complaints about Jim's teaching directed towards a host of other teachers in a lot of different classes (the nightmare of signal processing still haunts me at times). What I have found is that the root problem, MOST OF THE TIME, is the student needing to sit down after the lesson and spend the time to process the information in great detail. All of the information needed to understand the constructs of loops and conditional statements is there. He introduced what a variable was and the different types of variables. He discussed functions and clearly stated that upcoming videos would dive into creating your own functions. He worked through outputting info to the console and alerts, receiving input from the user. All of these things will be present in some way or another in any language. If you walk away from the course with an understanding of for loops, while loops, if/else statements, arrays, variables, and objects, i believe you will have walked away with the essential information in an introduction to programming course. The course is not about the language; its about the logic. He could have easily chosen PHP, Ruby, Java, Python C++, etc... To the best of my knowledge it has never been said that watching the videos and following along with the examples will give you all the information you need. I feel like the expectation is that you take the information in the videos absorb it, process it, review it, suck every bit of knowledge out of each lesson, and then go to the library or some other source of information and do additional research on each of the topics while you use the info to create your own programs. My opinion is that one of the reasons people get frustrated while learning programming is that there is nothing physical or concrete to look at. We live in a highly visual world and most people like/need to physically work with something or at least know that there is something physical there. In programming, as they say, it's all in your head. Even the output, at this point, could be seen as somewhat vague and abstract. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of reading, a lot of practice, and a lot of experimenting. Hopefully none took offense to my thoughts. They are nothing more than my opinions and observations.

man I am taking this course as a part of Front end Web Dev .... but... I GET NOTHING !!!! I am really clueless... i like Jim very much , i admire his work , but this course has nothing... no LOGIC , no LEARNING ..nothing... just several pieces of code writen without any logic in it... soryy Treehouse I am a BIG fan of you and also of Jim ...but you need to change this course.. and also take in consideration that I am not the only one ...

all the best wishes

It might help to do this program with the JavaScript course at www.http://www.codecademy.com/. It may help.

Niger Hall, as previously stated, there is a lot of abstract thinking in programming. And while this course focuses on JavaScript, it is taught in a manner that is meant to be at a slow pace and fairly redundant as is evident in his teaching style. When learning logic based systems, it can be extremely difficult to learn how intangible items produce visual results. This was something I myself had to overcome in order to continue my journey in learning how to code, do markup, and program. I am, and will always be on that journey for the remainder of my life. That being said, there are multiple resources out there besides Treehouse to help you learn. However, if you haven't done so yet, I recommend considering the Web Design Track first. This will help you understand those logic steps in taking something abstract and intangible like an idea and turning it into something visual. After learning a healthy dose of CSS, Sass, and HTML, I knew I was ready for JavaScript and more intricate logic based languages. But when I skipped those courses months ago, I was supremely lost as you may be today. if you'd like a book or two as a reference, I highly recommend HTML & CSS by Jon Duckett as well as JavaScript & jQuery by Jon Duckett. Both are informative, very clearly laid out, and well written for even the most beginner of programmers and designers. Best of luck to you Niger!

Hi Niger,

Feel free to watch the videos various times. You will learn from this videos. The thing is you won't learn automatically, you actually have to pause, replay, make notes, and ALWAYS; Be Patient!

Best of luck in your endeavors.

Mario

For me I have come across all the basics of programming (vars, loops, if/else, arrays, objects) briefly before. However, I've actually failed to understand them properly in the books and course I've taken. However, this video has actually helped greatly in my understanding and I understand the concepts better now than ever before.

That said, I could imagine that approaching this course with zero programming knowledge would leave the viewer questioning everything they'd just seen. I think this topic is hard to pick up and you really have to dabble around in your own code to understand what is going on and revisit everything over and over. I guess in this sense I agree with the original comment from Erik.

Thumbs up from me on this one.

Since my last post I have started following the W3C's Javascript Tutorial(tutorialhttp://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp) and found it to be excellent. Easy to understand and set out in a way that empowers learning and this has lead me to grasp the concepts I was struggling with when I had just watched the Jim Hoskins vids...check it out..hope this helps

I've found that when learning computer programming, it is alright if you don't fully understand everything that is being thrown at you right away. In my experience, there have been many instances where something did not necessarily make all that much sense, but I kept going and eventually had that "ah ha!" moment where things became much more clear.

A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript: The new approach that uses technology to cut your effort in half [Kindle Edition]. I found this to be very good resource that makes things really easy. Trust me, it's a great value.