TreeHouse Making a Website by Nick Pettit Course Review

About two weeks ago I decided to join up with TreeHouse.  I have finished their first full course as of this morning and in this space I will share my thoughts on Nick Pettit's course.  First off, when you go to TreeHouse you will be prompted to get on a "track".  The tracks are designed to mirror career paths, even though I have my doubts that just a TreeHouse education would be enough to get you a new career.  At any rate, most of the paths start you off doing Pettit's basic web design course.

The course covers basic HTML as well as its uglier meaner friend CSS.  How logical, friendly HTML ever fell in with a shady character like CSS I will never know but this is the world we live in.  The course is primarily videos (I am guessing around 2/3) with Pettit working in the workspace and talking you through it as he goes.  They are at their best when you work along with him.  This is a really cool feature of TreeHouse - you get to work with the videos in your own identical workspace.  This makes following along and learning code that much easier.  Generally speaking, Pettit speaks slowly and clearly, stays on message, and does not go on too long.  Most videos are around 7 minutes long with the longest being around 11 minutes.  I found this just about right.  Much longer than this and I think the videos become somewhat tough to bear.  If you have some basic computer literacy, you will have some moments of boredom as he explains everything (which I actually like).

The workspace is nicely done and does a much better job than Code Academy of attempting to replicate the kind of environment you might use in actual web design.  You can also export your creations outside of their environment which is a nice step toward moving your work beyond the shell world of TreeHouse.  That said, it is a shell world and the work you do in TreeHouse is not the same as working on your own in a standard environment.

Apart from videos, there are also code exercises.  For the most part they are pretty easy, though they do require you to really think.  I think on the whole they are easier than Code Academy but also more doable.  I had to ask one question to the forumites (I forgot a label, doh!) and I got a snappy and kindly worded answer.  However, for the most part everything was solvable, though some did take some thought on my part.

Finally, there are the big money quizzes!  You get big TreeHouse points for doing the quizzes and if you are watching the videos they are basically trivial.  I will say though, I love getting the points and the boost you get from dominating the quizzes!  Seriously, in this particular course the quizzes are super easy.

As a teacher, Pettit is clear and easy to follow if a little wooden at times.  I did, however, get lost later in the CSS section as he spoke on expanding your mobile web design to optimize larger screens.  I was particularly perplexed as he explained the mysterious and sinister sounding nth-child command.  There are also times when he is speaking about design choices and moving quickly through margins, padding, and floats and you really just need to stop and play with it yourself.  I am sure Pettit's quick explanations make sense when you are a pro, but as it gets deeper it feels like he moves faster (perhaps in the interest of keeping the videos length manageable).

Overall though, I loved it.  I couldn't wait to move through the lessons, accrue points, and listen to Pettit's explanations.  It is an excellently guided course and even includes a section on debugging, double checking, and putting your website on the internet.  I would definitely recommend TreeHouse to anyone looking to learn about coding or making a website.  My two week trial expires on August 24, and I will be paying for it after that so I definitely believe in the site.

Total hours into Programming: 76 (2 since last time )
Total Weeks Programming/Hours per week: 3/25

Progress on Gaddis' Starting out with Python: Done With Chapter 1, Appendix A,B
Progress on Shaw's Learning Ruby the Hard Way: Finished Exercise 1-9
CSC Class Time: 1 Hour

My Text game: 3 hours, 118 lines

TreeHouse (727 Points, 9 Badges)
TreeHouse Courses Finished:  Make a Website 

Code Academy Points: 634
Code Academy Badges: 66

Code Academy Skills Finished: 2 (Make a Website, Ruby)

Progress on Hartl's Tutorial Ready to start Chapter 3! 

Resources Finished:
Josh Kemp's No Degree, No Problem 8/14/2015

Chris Pine's Learn to Program 8/9/2015  

Entering the TreeHouse (vs CodeAcademy)

Today was a pretty busy work day, so I did not have a great deal of time to put in to my coding exploits.  That said, I have decided to try out Treehouse.  Treehouse is roughly similar to Code Academy, but features a few key differences:

(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 

Code Academy Days 1-3

As I previously mentioned, I come to this with basically no knowledge.  I did some work with basic about 20 years ago and was not very advanced then,  As a history professor, I have no day to day background in this.  This is, partly, what makes the process so intriguing to me.  Code Academy is well marketed and really does make you feel like it can help you learn to program with no real background.

So, does it work?  Well, I have been at it for 3 days.  I have around 170 points and 25 badges which equates to around 15 hours of work.   I went through the HTML introductory lesson pretty quickly and I am now around halfway through the Ruby programming language one.  Some of the lessons are smooth and very easy to follow.  Others are exceedingly vague and you have to go sifting through the forums to find your way. .  One thing is clear, I will be nowhere near ready to do anything on my own when I finish the Ruby lesson.  While the lessons teach you how to work within their nicely curated format featuring an editor and an output box which will allow you to see what your programs do, I have no idea how to open or begin to actually Program in the language at this point.

I have taken copious notes and can make things happen if I concentrate and follow along.  However, I feel sort of rudderless in terms of what I might or might not do in Ruby or any other language.  One thing I think the Academy needs is more forced practice.  While you must get your answers correct to move on in the lessons, one never really practices and masters.  One gains a basic level of familiarity and then it is on to the next thing.  Also, so far, there is very little practical talk about why I want an array.  What might I use an array for?  I have determined that Code Academy is a great first step, but that I am going to have to use it along with other resources to become a functional intermediate programmer.

Help, ideas, books?  Feel free to drop me a line!

..amazed, excited, empowered...frustrated.

Getting Started

A few days ago, I decided to see if I could learn how to make computer programs.  This happens just about every day, but in my case it is a little strange because I already have a career as a history professor.  In college I studied history and finished my Ph.D. in 2008.  Since then, I have been working at a small liberal arts college using computers but never much thinking about how they work.

Honestly, I can't think of a particular reason why I am interested in computer programming outside of my teenage years.  As a teen, I assembled my own computers, worked as "SysOp" of my own Bulletin Board System (BBS), and tinkered with my computer endlessly mostly in an effort to get it to play a host of computer games.  I worked with some Basis computer language and even did a high school independent study where I designed a lengthy but simple program.  I did some work on some very simple text games.  However, ultimately, I drifted away from this as I attended college and at this point I am no more computer literate than your average 35 year old person.

I don't know what I want to do with the skill of computer programming, but I do have a mini-goal.  I want to create an ap to go along with my basic history courses.  I don't exactly know how that will work yet, but I will be sharing my ups and downs in the coding world here.  After a basic google search, I have begin work in Code Academy which advertises itself as a (free!) site to help people teach themselves to code.  I completed the basic HTML lessons and am now around halfway through Ruby.  I also have begun to look at the MIT Open Courses (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) and have started on the basic computer science course.

More to come as I have more to say!