Spent 4 hours at Codecademy last week and learned nothing useful

I sat down with their JavaScript track for beginners. All those little animations and pop quizzes made me feel like I was playing a game, not coding. By hour 3 I could click through exercises but I still couldn't build anything real. Has anyone else found those interactive tutorials actually make it harder to learn?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_sam21d ago

Whoa, I'm gonna push back on this a little bit. I think Codecademy (and stuff like it) is actually a great starting point for people who have zero clue what they're doing, because it removes the fear of breaking things and gives you that immediate "hey I did a thing" feeling. You're not going to build a full app in four hours, but those little wins are what keep you from quitting on day one, you know?

jasonf1721d ago

I actually felt the same way but then I realized I was just really good at clicking the right button without understanding why. My wife walked in on hour two and asked if I was playing some kind of interactive coloring book. The sad truth is those platforms teach you to follow instructions, not to think like a programmer. I finally quit the course and just started trying to build a simple to-do list on my own, and I learned more in one afternoon of breaking things than in those four hours of guided clicking. So yeah, you're not alone in feeling like it was mostly time wasted.

the_xena21d ago

Interactive coloring book" is hilarious and way too real. I spent a whole weekend on one of those platforms feeling like a coding genius because I could make a button turn blue. Then I tried to do literally anything without the instructions and my brain just went blank. I ended up rage-deleting the whole thing and trying to make a website that just showed a picture of my cat. Took me three hours just to figure out why the picture wouldn't load. Turns out I spelled "image" wrong. So yeah, breaking things on your own is definitely the real teacher.