Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Joshua Collins
5,117 PointsWould be nice to have better detailed feedback on errors...anyone else think so?
I have now spent numerous hours on TreeHouse and still find myself constantly frustrated with the lack of "hints" or "error descriptions" during the Code Challenges. "Bummer! Try again!" and "Null" do not help me find a solution.
I understand the need to have some protection to prohibit people from "gaming" the system, but the majority of people are going to this site to learn and are aware that they are only hurting themselves by not learning the system.
Having better links (not to other videos) inside the code challenge would be great. Having to watch 8 and 15 minute videos over and over again just to find one sentence of information to move to the next topic is not the best way to teach someone.
Lastly, would it be possible to get a better Video Transcript? Something that could be downloaded. How about slides?
Overall, I think TreeHouse has a lot of potential, but other sites do a much better job providing support notes and written step-by-step instructions.
What does everyone else think? What do you think would make this better?
4 Answers
Ian Carroll
1,901 PointsTo address your first problem, it would be very, very, time consuming to provide error messages detailed to almost every error you could make.
Your second point is mildly invalid: You learn a lot better from videos. Reading text might be faster, but that's the point. Enjoy and dive in the content.
I'm not sure about transcripts.
Joshua Collins
5,117 PointsIan - Do you work for TreeHouse? Do you or have you ever worked for a startup? I ask because a company lives and dies based on how it's users respond and interact with their product.
Yes, of course it would be VERY time consuming to provide a more detailed feedback system, but if you want the user to learn faster and better you will make that investment.
Regarding your second point, people have many different learning styles and I was suggesting that they have multiple resources to address those styles. I was not saying to get rid of the videos, but rather to add additional resources to them.
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
Ian Carroll
1,901 PointsNo, I don't work for Treehouse. (Treehouse employees will have a word next to their name) I've never worked for a startup, but I know the basics. I understand that sometimes code challenges get tricky. The forums were added and that helps a lot with errors, people just post their problems here. I agree it might be time consuming to watch through a big video, so you do make a point about that.
Cheers,
Ian
Amit Bijlani
Treehouse Guest TeacherThanks for the valuable feedback. We are currently improving on the Code Challenge hints as we iterate on the engine. As for the video transcripts, it's not something we have considered but could look into.
Joshua Collins
5,117 PointsThank you for your response Amit. I do look forward to seeing those changes integrated onto the site in the future.
kyle rees
1,480 Pointsid be happy if the messages were equivlent to what the real life parsing engine would give you so php would give php errors and so on i wouldnt want to see any error messages more helpfull than that cause it would make people who are learning complacent and reliant on theese really helpfull messages which there never going to get from the script system in the real world
James Barnett
39,199 PointsI concur, I think that's a great idea to give the same error the parsing engine give for for the programming courses. Of course there are no such errors with CSS.
James Barnett
39,199 PointsHaving to watch 8 and 15 minute videos over and over again just to find one sentence of information to move to the next topic
What I usually do in these situations is to figure out what function/property I need to know more about and then search on the transcript to find the exact time index that concept is discussed.
Lastly, would it be possible to get a better Video Transcript? Something that could be downloaded.
You'll find the link for the video transcript on the right-hand side below the video is the section labeled downloads.
Joshua Collins
5,117 PointsHi James,
Thank you for your reply.
Quickly regarding the video transcript - they are in SRT format and 100% NOT user friendly. Below is a little example of what it looks like.
1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 [? Music ?] [Treehouse]
2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,000 Now that we've learned how to assign things to variables,
3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000 we're probably going to want to do different things in our programs
4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,000 depending on what those variables contain.
5 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:19,000 We do that through a process called control flow.
6 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:21,000 You might have heard of it before by hearing about
I would still like to hear your thoughts for having better feedback when a user get's an error on the coding challenges.
Overall, having supplemental resources would be a great thing to add to the site. As I mentioned before, I enjoy TreeHouse, but do often go to a competitors site when I'm stuck. I would think other users do this, especially for areas on TreeHouse that are currently very weak with content, such as jQuery.
Thank you again for your time and response.
Joshua Collins
5,117 PointsPS - EVERY time a user download a resource when they are mid-video, the video stops playing you have to reload the site. Might want to fix this BUG!