(1) The worst, it runs $25 or $50 for a premium membership. I am currently on a 14 day trial but in order to get the trial you do need to provide a credit card. So, compared to Code Academy, this is a definite downgrade!
(2) Videos! I always said I did not love videos because they require a measure of absolute attention which I do not often have to give (sometimes I try to sneak in lessons while my son plays with legos!). However, the videos have so far been really helpful and explained the information much more fully than the brief text blurbs on Code Academy.
(3) Quizzes! As a professor, I love quizzes. These prevent you from totally zoning out during the videos and actually listening. They also focus you more on learning and less on simply getting through the exercises. If you missed something that was important they can also refocus you.
(4) Tracking! When you first begin they ask you a few more questions about what you want to do with your coding training. While, as a newcomer, I found this a bit frustrating because I don't know exactly what I want yet, the system was a a little bit more robust than CodeAcademy's.
(5) Robust Profiles! At CodeAcademy, you get one point per lesson. Sometimes the lesson takes 2 seconds, like ones where you read a line and click save. Others take 20-30 minutes of struggle depending on how much willpower yo avoid cutting and pasting you have. At any rate, getting one point becomes pretty demoralizing after a while even though this makes no real difference in how much or little you learn about coding. Tree House has a similar points system but there are different values for different tasks and you can also get points from being a valued contributer to the forums.
At this point, I am less than 2 hours into TreeHouse and have spend well over 30 hours on CodeAcademy, so I am not really qualified to weigh in with any kind of final verdict, but those were my thoughts after just a sampling of TreeHouse. I should also mention that I am not into the coding part yet, I am just doing the basic HTML which they sort of force you to do unless you just opt out of the tracks altogether.
Total hours into Programming: 59 (.5 yesterday, I have had faculty orientation for 2 days, its been rough)
My Text game: 2 hours, 107 lines
Progress on Shaw's Learning Ruby the Hard Way: Finished Exercise 1-5
TreeHouse (105 Points) Code Academy Points: 567
Code Academy Badges: 60
Code Academy Skills Finished: 2 (Make a Website, Ruby)
Progress on Hartl's Tutorial Ready to start Chapter 3!
Books Finished:
Chris Pine's Learn to Program 8/9/2015
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