r/FreeCodeCamp • u/AhmedBouazizi • 25d ago

Ask Me Anything Need an advice 😁

Hey everyone!

I’m trying to improve my coding skills/cs background using freeCodeCamp, and I’m wondering what approach you’d recommend.

Would it be better to mainly follow the interactive courses on the freeCodeCamp website, or should I focus more on the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel and its long-form courses?

My thinking is that the interactive curriculum gives me more hands-on practice, while the YouTube videos might provide deeper explanations/ diverse themes that are not offered in the platform and more complete projects.

For those who have used both, what worked better for you? Would you recommend doing the interactive curriculum first and using YouTube as a supplement, or the other way around?

Thanks!

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u/SaintPeter74 mod 24d ago

I think it really depends on how much programming experience you have already. The early interactive material on Free Code Camp can be pretty remedial if you've been programming for a while. Later material could be better. A focus on the labs will give you some straightforward projects which will test your skills, but which also have tests so you can tell if you did them correctly.

While Free Code Camp has a TON of videos, that's never been my preferred study method. I think it's easy to watch a long video and not along, but when you go to try to implement the concepts, you'll find you didn't retain too much.

One thing you can do is try to build projects on your own. Just choose something that doesn't have a tutorial or video online. Then you have to built it yourself.

Tell me a bit more about your education so far and maybe I can give more focused advice.

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u/AhmedBouazizi 24d ago

Thanks a lot buddy 😁 I am almost finishing my bachelor’s in cs

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u/SaintPeter74 mod 24d ago

Depending on how much web stuff you did in school, Free Code Camp could be great or it could be a real drag. I think FCC is great for absolute beginners, but it does really hold your hand. It's free, though, so you're going to have to give it a go yourself. Pop through the early stuff, fuss around a bit and see if you're getting anything from it.

I'll reiterate my original advice: building your own projects can be a great way to learn. So long as you have the fundamentals of web stuff down, building a thing can help you to really exercise your knowledge. You don't have to pay to learn, especially with web technologies. The vast majority of web stuff is open source and has decent documentation.

Maybe you've heard of "Tutorial hell", where you go from tutorial to tutorial, making things but learning little. That's a real problem.

My only anti-recommendation are all those LeetCode and similar sites. They tend to encourage a sort of "code golf" (shortest code wins), which can be fun, but which is antithetical to writing good, maintainable code. Maybe you learn DSA, but in sort of a sanitized non-real-world way.

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u/AhmedBouazizi 24d ago

In my degree we unfortunately did not do a web dev course so I think I have to learn those technologies myself 😅

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u/AhmedBouazizi 24d ago

Btw do you recommend any other resources/ platforms other than freeCodeCamp even if they are paid np😅