Wasted 3 weeks on codecademy before someone told me to try freecodecamp instead

I kept doing those little exercises on Codecademy thinking I was learning, but then I finally tried FreeCodeCamp's projects and actually had to build things from scratch. That's when it clicked - you gotta actually struggle to write code, not just fill in blanks. Anyone else hit a wall with tutorial-based learning?

2 comments

2 Comments

irishenderson3d ago

Kinda used to defend Codecademy honestly, thought people were being dramatic about it being a waste of time. Then I spent a whole weekend breezing through their JavaScript track feeling like a genius, only to open a blank VS Code window Monday morning and completely freeze. @rowan593 it was the exact same thing with the tribute page for me, except I spent like 3 hours just trying to center a div and realized I had no clue what I was actually doing. FreeCodeCamp forces you to fight with the code and look stuff up yourself, which is way more like what real programming feels like. That whole feeling of being smart from filling in blanks is a trap, because it doesn't teach you how to problem solve when things break.

rowan5934d ago

yeah the fill in the blank stuff really lulls you into thinking you know what you're doing. what was the first project you hit on freecodecamp where you actually got stuck for more than an hour? for me it was that stupid tribute page, i kept freezing on the css layout.