Ok. Codecademy sucks.
That’s a bit harsh. Code academy is frustrating because…how do i express this? Right: it teaches magic incantations. As far as I have seen, people learn how to use different bits of javascript withot knowing how it works.
Hmm. Do I really have anything against magic spells? Um. Not really. Well. Actually, yes I do. Magic spells are unmemorable. Specifically, if you don’t understand something, if you don’t know how or why it works, it becomes impossible to remember. For example: scientists had people watch a abaseball game, and the. Asked them to recall what happened. They tested poeple who a big fans and people who had never seen a game. The people who had nev seen a game had more luck recalling the weather than the plays- they simply did not know where to look. I’d be willing to bet that they wouldn’t know that there were three outs for each team before they switched. The people who we huge fans knew the structurer of the inning, and could give a blow by blow account of it.
So the trouble with magic spells without context is that next week you won’t remember a darned bit lf javascript. Memory does not persist without review, without work, and codecade y gives out branches wintout work. Dare I say it, without drills.
So how would I advocate teaching javascript? Hell, I have no idea. However, I would like to try memorizing the important bits, and see if that makes me a better programmer faster. Or rather, if it makes me a programmer at all. I haven’t notably had much success in that area.
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Worst Ideas Ever 
Couldn’t agree more. I’m coming at it from a complete beginner’s position. I’m surprised how much I’ve learned in the past few days. Having said that, you’re absolutely right: The lessons sort of just throw chunks at you, which make sense in the context of the lesson but actually teach methodology so when you go to play on the scratch pad, you don’t really know what to do. Combined with the fact that many of these lessons are taught by people who, while obviously very clever with the code, have exactly NO concept about how to teach. Half a dozen times they, in the same lesson!, expected you to use symbols and operations that were never discussed.
Codeacademy is an okay supplement to a proper javascript course, but I would not recommend it as an actual method for beginners to learn. If you already have experience with coding, this might be more useful to you since you’ve already got a feel for the “geometry” of the whole thing.
[Edit] But actually DON’T teach methodology.
I agree. But you should edit this better.
Completely agree. I had a suspicion that codeacadamey sucked, so I searched google for it and found this. I was trying the javascript class and went pretty far into it, when I just admitted the content is missing something. I was wasting a lot of time on simple lines of code because the concepts were really not taught. They ask you to do things they have not covered.
I think it has potential, but I find a lot of the elearning websites, are really time wasters.