Class 7, FINAL PREPARATION: Choosing a JavaScript programming track.

Learn Street

• Love the supplemental videos, they helped me get a deeper understanding of the material and work really well for visual learners (which I’m not but I imagine they would prefer Learn Street).
• If I were on my own time I’d like to try more than one video before being allowed to sign up.
• User Interface is the ugliest. 
• Hated the console and colors.

Code Academy

• Love the badges, noises, trophies and other gamification. I found it super motivating.

• Loved the interface, sort of reminded me of Tron, was very old-school techie.
• The Console was the best of the three, fit the old-school futuristic look really well.
• Was familiar with it from another class and this contributed to my comfort level.
• Like the colors used in the text, like the minimalist aesthetic.

 Khan Academy

• My least favorite by far.
• Had a confusing interface.
•  After some research I learned that Khan Academy was primarily for math, this shows. The interface (especially the massive vocabulary overload below the console, which was extremely distracting), just seems more suited for math than programming.

•  I HATED the console. It was way too small, I couldn’t see what I was doing.

•  I also hated the color scheme. This probably sounds nitpicky but actually was a huge deal for me. The color scheme (mostly just the console) was so bright white my programming (and the visual hints that were posted around it) just didn’t pop and it was much harder to read my code and find my mistakes.

Summary and favorite:

This probably won’t be much of a surprise but my least favorite was Khan Academy. Learn Street wasn’t too bad, but code academy really just clicked with me. It worked well with my learning style, it didn’t shout out what I did wrong but instead helped me figure it out. The other two over-helped I felt (or helped too easily and early maybe would be a better term) and I think that would enable people to “cheat” (by just going straight to the help), which really only would cheat themselves. I also love the interface. I’m probably overly obsessing over it but it felt like something from the tech of my childhood (or the movie War Games) and I fell in love instantly. I also had the added familiarity from my other class. Basically it was a slam dunk as my favorite.