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I know I'm just nitpicking, but the grammar in the title of the video ("_Whats_ the best way to learn coding?") kills my confidence. Admittedly that isn't indic

by Smerity 14y ago

I know I'm just nitpicking, but the grammar in the title of the video ("_Whats_ the best way to learn coding?") kills my confidence. Admittedly that isn't indicative of the quality of the product but it's something best avoided. I spend my summer teaching high school students to code, but I doubt this resource would help at all. To be honest, I'm not sure what the target audience is for this. The tutorial assumes knowledge of Unix (otherwise you're copying commands such as mv, cd, touch, ...) without explanation, meaning it's not necessarily about coding anymore. Yes, knowledge of the Unix command line is important, but that complexity should either be approached explicitly or hidden away, especially with a tag line "the best way to learn coding". Coding is quite independent of the OS you're using. I'd also question using RoR as "the best way to learn coding". This is nothing against the framework, simply the complexity and the amount that's magically set up for you defeats or complicates the learning process. If they really want to go with that tag line, I'd be more specific -- something like "the best way to learn RoR/webapp coding". There's also a lack of information on the CodeLearn site. Is it a pay service after the beta ends?

schrijver 14y ago
Speaking from personal experience, a large MVC framework like Rails is horrible for learning coding. I tried to learn Django at the same time I learned Python and my head exploded with all the conventions you try to learn at the same time. Flask provided a much better start. There is a direct coupling between query and response, and the web-app is but a thin layer around the basic language. In the Ruby world, this would mean starting with Sinatra instead of Rails. The added benefits of MVC only become apparent in larger projects. Learning this kind of stuff in the browser is a great idea though.

by Smerity 14y ago

schrijver 14y ago

Speaking from personal experience, a large MVC framework like Rails is horrible for learning coding. I tried to learn Django at the same time I learned Python and my head exploded with all the conventions you try to learn at the same time. Flask provided a much better start. There is a direct coupling between query and response, and the web-app is but a thin layer around the basic language. In the Ruby world, this would mean starting with Sinatra instead of Rails. The added benefits of MVC only become apparent in larger projects. Learning this kind of stuff in the browser is a great idea though.