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JavaScript JavaScript Foundations Variables Basics

Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points
Posted by Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points

Issues with the quality of the teaching and organization in Jim's courses.

I really feel like the Intro to Programming and JavaScript Foundations courses are very poorly organized and taught in comparison to the other courses in the Rails track. The direction in how to use/edit your own code is not clear (workspaces??? how to open/save work in in a browser???), and Jim's explanations make too many assumptions about learners understanding of certain concepts. It is very frustrating as I have to keep second guessing myself and checking outside sources. No doubt Jim is an expert with regards to JavaScript, but I feel some direction is needed in his teaching style and organization.

5 Answers

anguswhiston
anguswhiston
17,225 Points
anguswhiston
anguswhiston
17,225 Points

I'm pretty sure those 2 courses (Intro to programming and JS Foundations) are 2 of the earlier courses made on treehouse. There's no reference to Workspaces because when he filmed them Workspaces wasn't a thing. They are more "listen and follow along with your own text editor" type videos.

If you make a file for each lesson and type out what he does and then play around with the code to understand what is doing what, you will get a decent understanding. Combining this with the new stuff Dave has made will then solidify your knowledge even more.

Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points
Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points

I hadn't thought of the fact that Workspaces wasn't available then. Sound advice about using the text editor, thanks!

matthigbee
matthigbee
12,759 Points
matthigbee
matthigbee
12,759 Points

Steven,

I highly recommend not wasting any time on his courses. Dave McFarlands are MUCH MUCH better.

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/javascript-basics

Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points
Steven Quinn
Steven Quinn
12,519 Points

That's great Matt, Thanks for the tip. I've had a look at the course and it seems to be more what I'm looking for. It has better structure and he ties the JavaScript code to real world uses.

Adam Romański
Adam Romański
8,568 Points
Adam Romański
Adam Romański
8,568 Points

I can't agree with you Matt. Once you finish Dave McFarlands course you will be able to understand the concepts presented in Jim's course too. I have to admit that some things presented by Jim were too difficult, but now when these two courses are available at Treehouse you can run it one by one and then JavaScript will become even easier to learn. The biggest problem for me was passing the course with Andrew Chalkley and the task application. Andrew checks the JS documentation all the time but explains very little and i couldn't understand half of it. Now i'm trying to check other sources to get more familiar with JS before i move on with frontend developement track.

Samuel Stephen
Samuel Stephen
8,493 Points
Samuel Stephen
Samuel Stephen
8,493 Points

I'm not able to compare the teaching styles of Dave and Jim (because I haven't taken Dave's course), but what I can say is I'm learning a whole lot, and I attribute my learning to Jim's very thorough and easy to understand teachings. I'm also very new to JavaScript and I'm on the Rails Development track, so I've needed to pause the video and even rewind several times to fully understand.

BTW, I substitute Workspaces for Sublime. I'm on a MacBook Pro; I've found that's the most user-friendly text editor. I never use Workspaces anymore because it has closed on me several times before it saved. I guess I just got frustrated enough times before I decided to switch. LOL

Anyways, I wouldn't skip this completely. I think this is the fastest I've ever learned a new programming language.

Adam Romański
Adam Romański
8,568 Points
Adam Romański
Adam Romański
8,568 Points

I work also on MAC OS – try Atom text editor, i've discovered it recently. It has lot of cool plugins you can apply.

Samuel Stephen
Samuel Stephen
8,493 Points

My first impression: it looks pretty similar to Sublime. What do you like about it vs Sublime?

I'm also currently learning Ruby, and I've been suggested RubyMine. Have you any experience with it? https://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/

Jamie Min
Jamie Min
6,453 Points
Jamie Min
Jamie Min
6,453 Points

One thing I just want to mention here is that, Jim's teaching style has been so frustrating and difficult to follow. I don't understand why Treehouse would put those two complicating and confusing courses as the prerequisite courses in the Front-end development track. Jim's explanations did not even help me understand why we are learning and using JavaScript in the first place. I think Treehouse should consider replacing those two courses with something more understandable and manageable for beginners. Now that I have realised some people are experiencing similar problems to mine, I am going to to switch over to Dave's course.