Treehouse Vs Lynda Vs Skillshare Vs Udemy Vs Coursera Review

I did this comparison myself not that long ago. I have a free subscription to Lynda.com through my employer and yet I still find myself paying for and loving Treehouse more! I will not discredit those other sites as every site has its own niche of people who will subscribe to them, but I think Treehouse is the current winner for those in our generation. I have used Treehouse to learn skills and then I have used those skills and demonstrated those to allow me skip classes at school. It's been such a time and money saver!

These are the 6 sites I've tried while trying to learn to code:

codecademy

• Content: no videos just code challenges
• What I liked
  • Intermediate Projects
  • API Track
• What I Didn't
  • Gives hints to easily, so newbies don't really learn
  • courses written by multiple people

Treehouse

• Content: videos w/ code challenges
• What I Liked
  • Professionally produced
  • Instructors are employees
  • Short videos, don't put you to sleep
• What I Didn't
  • Project-first approach, causes issues w/ some topics

Udemy

• Content: Just videos, demo files for gold members
• What I liked
  • Large & varying library
• What I didn't
  • Quality varies radically
  • Not enough value for price

Lynda

• Content: Just videos, demo files for gold members
• What I liked
  • Excellent intermediate topic coverage
• What I didn't
  • Similar to listening to lectures in classroom
  • Not made by professional staff

Code School

• Content: videos & code challenges -What I liked
  • Spilt window feature, slides next to code challenges
  • Professionally produced
• What I didn't
  • Not particularly newbie friendly

Learn Street

• Content: no videos just code challenges
• Only 3 courses, JavaScript, Ruby, Python
• What I liked
  • Well Structured
  • Helps you apply what you learned -What I didn't
  • I only wish they had more courses )

Thanks for posting. This and all the replies so far are really helpful and much appreciated!

I had to mention one more thing... Even while taking Coursera courses that I love the breeze over things that I don't get. I come back to Treehouse to figure out in laymen terms what the instructor is talking about. Treehouse speaks kindergarten to people like me who did not grow up on the command line prompt, it just does an awesome job. I can't thank Treehouse enough for filling in the gaps in a very easy to grasp manner.

I used to keep myself away from Treehouse due to their constant YouTube ads, and a silly misconception that it was just like codecademy (great for starting from scratch + it's free!). I also kept my lynda.com account but its huge collection of videos is completely disorganized and a little bit outdated depending on the topic. I don't even recall how I suddenly decided to try Treehouse. The result? I'm completely satisfied with Treehouses' content, tracks and quality, and I will keep my subscription for several months. As many of you have said, Treehouse really nailed our educational needs for just $25 every month.

I'm on CodeAcademy, Treehouse and Udacity. I really like CodeAcademy as I can pace myself. But I find I come to Treehouse when some things need a bit better explanation. But I also find the pace on Treehouse a little slow sometimes. Thus I tend to use both complementary with one another. Udacity was better when it was completely free, I'm waiting to see how that shakes out as some intructors were hit and miss.

This is really nice comparison. But I think better comparison should be between codeschool and teamtreehouse. As they both cover similar type topics. Lynda has variety of courses so they are out of question. I think you guys should try codeschool and try to same course from different angle. Codeschool offer first month trial: http://webuilddesign.com/enroll-in-code-school-at-9-dollars/

When i started out, i used Lynda.com as a teacher gave me his permission to use his account. I loved it! I was new, stuff i was looking on yt and internet, i had much better quality , and easy to find out there. Ii used it around for 8 months.

LYNDA What i liked about lynda is that they cover a lot of topics, much more than treehouse. E.g Video software, adobe software, business in deep etc.. though , they are made by individuals authors, its still good.

I really hated that there are videos 10 years old and i ended up doing some old video . Which means that i was learning wrong technology. It gave me a good introduction to it and practice , but its old.

When i came to treehouse, i had to brush up my skills , my CSS. It was old. I had to re-learn it all. Though i still learned a lesson there, not just what i wanted.

Another thing is that lynda specialises in one topic tutorials as well in soem areas. if i would learn and app developement in Obj-C, i would probably check out there at first as it gives you more in deep introduction where you can learn it your self.

I didnt like that to downolaad most of the code , or images or something, you have to pay . I mean come on!

Treehouse I love the way its done, i came here by seeing good reviews on yt about treehouse . How it brushed up people skills and what they did. I have tried it my self and here i am! :D Treehouse covers you with basics. You know , with basics you can do anything. When we start with CSS, we often got stuck. But with time, if we want to do anything with it, we will jut figure it out. Same as talking about programming. I dont know ow to do soemthing but i have enough skill to do it( i dont : p) meaning that i dont have to look fro tutorials on how to but i have enought understanding that i can do it like CSS.

Treehouse provides you free source code as well. You can downolad it and work on it .

Udemy

Using Udemy, it varies. The prices are over rated, i know. But does anyone buy them? Udemy staff is greedy ? maybe , but heres a HINT: Udemy allways makes sales for 8 pound, 16 pound and around 25 pound. So the courses arent really expensive. You just have to wait for them to be lower price. Though that the best courses.

Other courses are overpiced as they never get down on udemy discount .

What i love about it is that it makes you build projects from beggining. Unlicke treehouse, in udemy, you do HTML/CSS then PHP or whatever. The quality of these vidoes, well, depends. You can get either good, or not. The quality of the informaiton, well , its good but its rare to find a good quality video with cood structure and code and clear speaking.

Once you go throw basics , you can look there , only for 8,16,25 pounds, dont reccomend to buy anything other, unless, you have rpve that the videos your buying for 400pounds, are woth, do your homework.

I noticed that some videos ther you can find free by the same author on youtube, or on their website somewhere so in other place where he posted it. See people ther are greedy, they want more and more money too , but at least their videos are good ^^ I havednt bough any of thiers videos as i found them free posted by them . But see , thats a strategy.

You can allways re-sell yor stuff on internet, via books, audio to make monney.

Codeacademy

It gives you pretty basics. Its a bit hard and the hints are too easy , and sometimes too hard . its a great place to start as it gives you understanding and then you re-write the code so many times, for different things that it stays in your head. Its good to do something that you learned , you can re-do it , its like practice ^^

Over all, start with treehouse . Unless ur in software , use lynda. Move into Codeacademy when you have learned new skill on treehouse. Use udemy once you got the grasp on treehouse or lynda about basics and you can think for your self.

Hope this help.

Just had to add my 2 cents here:

I've really enjoyed learning from Treehouse. I chose it over Lynda because I wanted to sign up with Lynda, having heard so much about it, but it took them 3 weeks to get back to a question I had about signing up, and another time it took them a month and a half — it's like they didn't want my money!

When I tried Lynda.com's free trial and had a question about coding, I never got a reply at all. I even tried to reach out on Twitter several times, there was never any answer. I couldn't find a forum to post questions in either. Not being able to get feedback or questions answered in a timely fashion — or at all — makes it reaaaaally hard when you are trying to learn a new skill!

But when I tried Treehouse's free trial, the answers from the staff and community were returned to me within an hour or less on the forums and the emails are always answered within a day. They even let you use the forums to put up your personal (non-lesson) projects that you're working on to get feedback and help, which is amazingly helpful. So guess who I decided to give my money to? ;)

TeamTreehouse.com 's customer service trumps Lynda.com, in my experience, and that is crucial when learning code, design, etc.!

Also, not sure if Lynda has one (guessing yes), but Treehouse's smartphone app works nearly as well as their desktop environment (just wish I could speed up the videos to double time like I do on the desktop platform). This is great because I can take it with me to the gym when I'm cycling or on the treadmill (have to squeeze my learning in where I can!). Definitely a bonus with Treehouse.

Right on.

"I've found many people teaching don't understand principles of teaching that create good learning environments"

I find this is why coding is "hard to learn" bad teachers or "camera friendly people" who know code don't improve the experience. It takes a deep passion for teaching to translate a challenging subject and thats why a great teacher is worth the $.

Great teachers can observe the student having challenges and adapt to fit, translating that to an online environment requires a dedicated person with empathy to the student that really knows the subject and knows how to get inside your head and chunk down complex info to convey info. Treehouse gets an A-.

I've tried, Udemy, Coursera, Codeacademy, codebattles, typing.io and my local Galvanize (freaking awesome sauce!!!)

Galvanize recommended Treehouse (I am happy they did)

This is definitely true. I found that with codeacademy.com I was forgetting concepts shortly after finishing a challenge. I love the repetition in all of these videos and that I get in use. I got my associate's degree in software development so it somewhat laid down a foundation for programming and I knew what certain things did when I used them but I did not know why. The videos explain everything sooo well.

I have free access to Lynda through my city's amazing public library system. Lynda is great but listening to lectures for hours on end just doesn't cut it for me. I don't retain the information as much as I would like because Lynda is not interactive. I cannot remember what code I was writing 24 hours earlier. Sometimes, depending on the instructor, Lynda flies through some of the material. There is no forum like this one that allows people to post questions. I think some of the Lynda videos may be more helpful to those with an adequate background in coding. But Treehouse is great for beginners who need some hand holding and interactive tutorials and quizzes to help us stay focused.

Thank you all for giving these useful comments to this useful topic. I decided to get a subscription after I have tried a 7-day-period trial with Treehouse. There are a plenty of coding courses, videos, workshops that I can choose from and they are all user-friendly and well-designed especially for newbies. Also, Treehouse Mobile app is awesome. It works exactly the same as it does on the desktop site even though there is a glitch sometimes when I turned my phone from landscape to portrait or vice versa. However, I won't consider it as a major concern.

Treehouse recently released a chart that compares Treehouse against Lynda, Udemy, and Pluralsight to help you find the best solution for you. Find it here: http://business.teamtreehouse.com/treehouse-alternatives.html