Tried freeCodeCamp vs Codecademy for a month each and the difference was huge

I spent 30 days on freeCodeCamp building their projects and then 30 days on Codecademy doing their interactive lessons. The hands-on projects in freeCodeCamp made the concepts actually stick in my brain while Codecademy felt like I was just clicking buttons. Has anyone else felt like one approach clicks way more than the other for learning to code?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire_gibson1d ago

My buddy tried learning guitar with those apps that show you where to put your fingers vs just learning a real song and yeah same exact thing. Actually doing something imperfect beats watching a perfect demo every time.

jamesroberts1d ago

Yeah man, you nailed it. I tried one of those guitar apps and spent a whole week staring at diagrams trying to get my fingers right, felt like I was just memorizing shapes not actually playing. Then I just picked a three chord Blink-182 song and stumbled through it over and over, sounded awful but I learned more in an hour than the app taught me in a week. It's like the difference between watching a YouTube video on how to fix a leaky pipe and just getting under the sink with a wrench and figuring it out by making a mess first. You gotta get your hands dirty, that's where the real learning clicks. Yeah my timing was trash but at least I was actually making music, not just guessing where my thumb goes.