Alright, loyal visitors. It’s been forever since I’ve posted, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work on a new venture, the fruits of which will benefit all of us here, because I have been expanding my skills and will happily share those yummy tidbits with you. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to weigh in on one of the “big” movements I have seen in late 2011 and early 2012, the ‘Teach Yourself To Code’ (TYTC) movement.

It started last year with the very notable (and notably hilarious) Rails for Zombies. This year has seen the introduction of Codecademy and Treehouse, both of which I have the utmost of respect for. As someone who has friends and family members going through their courses, I of course felt that it was in my best interests to go through the courses myself, so that if any questions did come up, I would have some opinions and some experience and be able to help them.

In that spirit, I have been taking part in Codecademy’s ‘Code Year 2012′ and faithfully doing the exercises every Monday night. They have been interesting, in that rather than my learning anything related to JavaScript from them, I have been learning HOW they teach what they teach and how they go through and approach some of the concepts.

Overall, I am favourably impressed. The concepts such as variables, arrays, iteration, and logic testing are very well laid out. There are a few conventions that they use which I don’t necessarily agree with, and that they don’t explain fully.

For example, one of the things they teach on Codecademy is using multiple var statements to declare variables. This is clearly not ideal, however for the beginning programmer it is probably a good choice. Unfortunately, the ‘var’ repetition is a hard habit to break, I have found.

Another interesting thing they teach is using a var declaration to define a function. An example is:

var myFunction = function(param1, param2) { //do stuff; };

This is not the only way to build a function, and is in fact a somewhat non-standard way to build a function. Again, I can see that their methodology is to allow it to expand out to something more later. However, as a starting methodology for a beginner, it may be somewhat confusing.

I believe, firmly, that Codecademy is doing great work. Especially now that they have recently opened up the ability to create your own code lessons. Feel free to give them a try.

Edit: Also just found this course here, which I recommend to everyone. If you’ve been reading my blog and have been handling the material with ease, you may not need it. However, if you know someone who wants to get involved in coding, and especially if someone is going through the Codecademy courses I discussed above, then have them sign up for this.