Treehouse still relying on videos and in browser text editor?

Any way. this is just your opinion. not everyone thinks like this. In browser tutorials makes it easy for your assignments to be tested using unit test. You can set up your own work space using any IDE or text Editor and write your code. Once you are sure its working properly, copy back into the browser to pass the unit test.

Suppose the testing is not done this way, they would have to create some other cloud testing mechanism that tests the codes in the file you will upload. Now this is going to introduce another problem with file uploads all together.

Also if you follow the exercises, you would realized that a lot of times codes you write earlier on are copied across with few additions requiring that you supplier your own code to pass further tests.. In browser testing simplify this process as well. If you think otherwise, i would want you to say how you think these things can be addressed.

Hi there! I feel like reliance is a bit of a strong word here. Treehouse doesn't really rely on workspaces to teach the courses. This can be evidenced not only by the project files associated with the videos being made available to work with on your local system but also by courses specifically about setting up IDEs and local environments to run/test/compile your code. There are also entire tracks that require the use of your local machine and don't contain many (if any) workspaces at all. The most notable of these are the iOS Development and Android tracks.

I don't believe workspaces were ever intended to replace the local environment completely. It seems to me that they are there as a way to launch a student directly into the learning process without having to set up a local environment right off the bat.

You mention Visual Studio and other text editors/IDEs, but my guess is that you haven't fully explored what Treehouse has to offer. I say this because there are specifically courses on using Visual Studio and Vim. You can also find this blog by Nick Petit which discusses Sublime Text, Vim, TextMate, Coda, and Notepad++,

As for learning by videos vs text, I'd like to say that everyone has different learning styles and capabilities. I, myself, am limited to what I can listen to so text is vitally important to me. Because of this, I use the closed captioning associated with the videos a great deal. This text is searchable if you view the transcript associated with the video.

Also, it seems that you've excluded auditory learners from the mix. I have an old friend who is a brilliant developer. As it so happens, he is legally blind. This makes auditory learning more comfortable and practical for him in many cases. Just because text works better for you and I does not make this universally true. My opinion is that Treehouse uses a combination of audio/video/text in such a way as to make it accessible to as many people as it possibly can.

And unless you are explicitly seeking a Techdegree, you are not required to do the challenges. These may be skipped at any time although the course will not be checked off as "complete" until you complete them.

Again, this is just my two cents!

You're right. If the videos and challenges do not help you learn, then use the learning style that is best for you. My method is Watch. Do. Teach. Use what is best for you to learn, and stick with it.

I have never used workspaces, and honestly I never will. I was learning here before workspaces, and I prefer using my own dev environment to workspaces, but for people starting out workspaces is great! Students do not need to worry about where their files are, no problems with linking CSS/JS, and that is just for frontend. Think of not knowing any Python and then having to have to go through the pain of getting that set up locally, if you haven't yet, try it. So workspaces are meant and created for people who never used a text editor. I think it's a great way to ease them in to that world.

There is nothing wrong with an in browser text editor in general. I lot of people do use an in browser text editor and they create projects like this: Ana Tudor
I use sublime, it's great, you should too. why do you have to use workspaces? what is the difference between them when you are coding? I don't see any difference in the code you are writing/learning. I don't think its fair to students who don't know what a div is at a basic HTML level to have them create a virtual server on their own computers.

Now here's the hard part. The projects worth doing only come from you, not anyone else. Treehouse does use project based courses. making a todo app is in the JS courses here and is kinda the "hello world!" to any programming language. If you never made an app before, I would suggest you start there, or learn the basics of the language prior to doing so, that way you will know what you are doing. Know what you want to build, and build it, step by step.

Treehouse should not be your "one stop shop" for everything web development. You need to supplement your learning here with logic courses, Algorithms, ect. you can start here if you like MIT

Lastly, like I said in the beginning, you need to find a learning style that works for you and use it everyday. If reading helps you, use the transcripts from the videos. use the download project files with your text editor. There are several ways here to learn, not by just watching the videos and using workspaces.