understanding the jquery api

Hi, Raj. I had a great experience with Hack Reactor’s remote front-end course. I was interested in their 3-month full-stack JavaScript immersion (remote), so I saw the prep class as a way to experience the remote learning format and get a feel for Hack Reactor’s classroom environment.

If you’re interested in Hack Reactor’s full-stack immersion, the remote prep front-end course is definitely worth doing. Our instructor did a great job letting us know what to expect in the full course and preparing us to apply to the program.

If you’re not interested in their full-stack immersion, and only want to take the prep course as a way to learn front-end, I still think it’s worth doing. However, I would suggest being familiar with front-end concepts prior to taking it, so you get the most out of the course. The pace is pretty fast. It’s only a month long, so we didn’t spend too much time on any one topic. Some of the things covered were Markup, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, JSON, and APIs. In addition to JavaScript basics, there was a big emphasis on functional JavaScript — we learned about higher order functions, callbacks, closures, and more. I was in the pilot class, so it’s possible the curriculum has changed somewhat.

I went into the course knowing HTML and CSS pretty well, but I wish I had known more about some of the other topics. However, it served the intended purpose for me — I was able to experience the remote classroom format and learn more about Hack Reactor. I left there excited about their full-stack immersion course and better prepared to apply. I had my technical interview about a month ago and will be starting Hack Reactor (remote beta) in January!

Hope this information is helpful. If you have other questions, let me know.

Kelly

It’s hard to compare the two because the formats are so different. The Hack Reactor course was more project-based. We would have short lectures (longer at the beginning of the course, very brief towards the end), but the majority of the time was spent working on exercises and projects — either alone or in pairs.

There were two pilot classes (see note below), but in my class, we had a lot of freedom when it came to the projects — we could make them as simple or complex as we wanted. For example, one project was “create a one-page app that uses jQuery”. My partner and I came up with an idea and built the app together. The next day, each pair presented their projects to the rest of the class. This was a fairly typical pattern. Learn something, maybe do some exercises, then work on a project that incorporated what we learned and whatever else we were willing to learn on our own by looking at documentation, etc.

As far as breadth and depth… I think Treehouse has courses on all the same topics covered in the HR course. On many topics, Treehouse goes more in-depth — HTML and CSS, for example. And they often give links to additional resources in the teacher’s notes. A motivated student who applies what they’ve learned and builds something with it can get a lot out of the Treehouse courses. On some topics, such as functional JavaScript, HR goes more in-depth.

Both are good ways to learn. With Treehouse, students need to be motivated enough to complete projects on their own. At HR, the projects are part of the course, so less self-motivation is needed.

Note: There were two pilot classes, taught by two different instructors. I don’t know much about the other class, but I believe the classes differed in how material was presented and how projects were handled.