💻 Free Code Camp - The world's best learning platform for coding?
Since I'm one of many who learn to code online, I want to share my experiences and thoughts. I started to learn coding on my own last year and tried many different sources to get the knowledge into my head. I learned on online courses (like Free Code Camp), watched a lot of tutorials on Youtube, paid for online courses, read a bunch of books, joined local Meetups and started to write own projects.
📄 Table of contents
- 1. What is Free Code Camp 🔻
- 2. What's it about? - Cornerstones🔻
- 3. Why is it so good? 🔻
- 4. How to use it? 🔻
- 5. What's coming? 🔻
- Conclusion
- Dive deeper - some useful links
“If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.” — Robert X. Cringely
1. What is Free Code Camp 🔻
The homepage itself explains quite well what they want to accomplish and provide. The FAQ also covers a lot. It says:
We’re an open source community that helps you learn to code.
You can work through our self-paced coding challenges, build projects, and earn certificates. We also connect you with people in your city so you can code together.
So in a nutshell it is another online source for learning to code.
2. What's it about? - Cornerstones🔻
First and foremost, it's free, which is pretty amazing when you look at the quality they provide.
At the time of writing there are 4 certificates:
1. Front End
HTML&CSS- Frameworks
- Basics of
Javascript - Different JS Algorithms (a lot!)
- JSON APIs and AJAX
2. Back End
NodeandExpressas runtime environmentGITfor version controlMongoDBfor databases
3. Data Visualization
- Different Projects using foremost
SASSReactandD3
4. Full Stack Development
- 4 non-profit projects
3. Why is it so good? 🔻
Real projects
What I really enjoyed was the fact that you can code real working projects with a very big community at your hand. There are easy chapters with a lot of guidance that allow you to get comfortable with the new syntax and problems. After that you have the opportunity to write something that is actually working. Something that you can present to your friends. Small projects like the Javascript Calculator are absolutely doable and "cool" enough to be presented to non-coding people :) Because from personal experience, when you tell people you are learning to code, they want to see results. It's pretty hard to present something you created yourself on other learning platforms. In my opinion the gap between guided theoretical coding and real life projects was too big.
Community
Free Code Camp itself provides various social media and chatting platforms. But the real value is in the people that learn and provide help for others. Especially in the beginning I was really delighted that there are so many well documented solutions from different people. It helped a lot to solve problems in different ways and see the opportunities in coding. It also shows how amazing open source projects can be. The whole platform has hundreds of contributors, who not only bring new content into the project, but also provide solutions for existing bugs and other issues. (See Github ➡️)
The forum also provides great interaction with people, who are on the same journey as you are.
Another great thing are local meetup groups. People gather to share their experience in Free Code Camp with others in their cities. Get together with like-minded people to improve and easify your learning experience. :)
4. How to use it? 🔻
The "about" section actually covers also a FAQ. It explains what the curriculum provides and how you can incorporate it in your personal life to get the most out of it. In my opinion the curriculum serves perfectly as a primary education source but also just for freshing up basics.
The navigation in the curriculum is simple, intuitive and on point. Dive into it and you I'll see quickly if it is for you.
How did I tackle the challenges so far?
Of course I started with the basic guided challenges. They are separated in small steps, that are easy to understand and easy to look up on the internet.
After that I went through all of the algorithm challenges. These are very important to understand logical programming and are much harder. I always tried to solve them with the references they provided. Looking up JavaScript methods and how to implement them. Here it is crucial to make up your own mind and NOT COPYING existing solutions. However, to broaden my comprehension, I looked up other solutions and tried to understand and reconstruct them. These challenges will take time! Be consistent and don't be afraid to spend more than a day on some of these!
Ultimately I did the coding projects. These are the most rewarding, but also most challenging ones. Look for ways how other people did it, to get going with your first ones. And then again: Keep looking, be consistent, create your own solutions and never give up!
After finishing the Front End Certificate, you are able to attack the next challenges on your own. At that point you should have an understanding how to find solutions online to your own problems.
The Back End- and the Visualization Certificate just have projects to be solved. Currently the jump is too big. I am myself have been learning a lot on my own now to complete one of these challenges. They are very big compared to the Front End Challenges. However, when you master these you will be able to create something from scratch and truly mastered the basics of a full stack developer. 🚀
The release of the new Free Code Camp platform will provide a lot of guided challenges on the Back End and Visualization part, which fill the current gap. Stay tuned 🌟
5. What's coming? 🔻
Currently there is a beta version of the new Free Code Camp platform. Check it out ➡️. Unfortunately I didn't find any release date, but when you look at the challenges you see that there is coming a lot. It makes me really excited. In my opinion Free Code Camp brings online learning of web development to another level.
The Github repo shows current pull requests and issues. You can easily see how far they got and where certain problems lie. If you have solutions don't hesitate to contribute!
What I also really enjoy and actually is a good way of keeping up, are newsletters and articles from Quincy Larson and the Free Code Camp community.
On medium you'll also discover other amazing individuals that share their experience and knowledge. Definitely check it out!
Conclusion
Free Code Camp helped me a lot to get going in a field I had no experience in. It provides a great entry point in the world of programming the web. Till now it is definitely the best learning experience on the internet for me. Make sure to check out the links and give it a try! :) And if you are from Vienna (Austria), join our local meetup group. 🎆
Please leave comments, feedback and suggestions as I am always trying to improve.
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