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Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

teamtreehouse.com

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Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#171

Post by CHsurfer »

This site gives me the impression that after successfully completing the course I will be able to be hired as a developer. Assuming that I pick up the concepts and can apply them - is this reasonable? My gut tells me no, but I'm not in the business.

At night (and in the early mornings and sometimes at lunch...) I have been teaching myself to program Rails apps. I use books to learn concepts (and RailsCasts too) and I rely on Google and Stack Overflow for problem solving when I get stuck.

I have learned a ton, not only about the language but also about good programming practices. For the latter, I tend to first learn the concept from a book, but only internalize it after having suffered some pain which could have been avoided if I had been using that particular practice. So far I would include orthogonality, version control, testing and asynchronously running processes which I don't control to this list. Behavior Driven Development is also now starting seem like a real benefit and not just overhead so I will try that with my next feature addition.

I guess my question is, how far down the road does one have to go before they could be considered as a potential employee?

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#172

Post by ryancarson »

jabkobob wrote: post #120
rkalla wrote: post #9

Feedback: Have no idea what Treehouse is, clicked the site, took 300ms to look at the 3 giant buttons. Clicked "web design" (the site looks very nice BTW) ... and started learning about web design. Watched the first video, hit the only button "Let's Go" and found a collection of other videos to get me further down the path of web design, letting me skip directly to my problems areas instead of grinding through things…

I didn't have such a flawless experience. I was first baffled because I didn't understand what kind of website that is. I thought, well doesn't matter, it looks nice, let's try iOS. Then I watched that intro video that promised a first look at Objective C. I clicked "Lets go" and ended up at an XCode tutorial. Huh? So I clicked the breadcrumb navigation, and thought "App Life Cycle" sounds interesting. I clicked that…

Thanks for the feedback

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#173

Post by ryancarson »

CHsurfer wrote: post #171

This site gives me the impression that after successfully completing the course I will be able to be hired as a developer. Assuming that I pick up the concepts and can apply them - is this reasonable? My gut tells me no, but I'm not in the business. At night (and in the early mornings and sometimes at lunch...) I have been teaching myself to program Rails apps. I use books to learn concepts (and RailsCasts too) and I…

The companies we're partnering with (Living Social, WordPress/Automattic and Bank Simple) will tell us they want to look at folks who meet certain criteria, like this:

1. Looking for a job 2. Have unlocked these badges (as an example): 2a. UX Foundations 2b. Ruby Foundations 2c. Rails Foundations 3c. Node.js Foundations

Then we'll present them with those people and they'll choose if they want to approach those folks to interview

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#174

Post by ryancarson »

brown9-2 wrote: post #115
jmilloy wrote: post #106

Loving this. It's very inviting. One small thing - I think the badge map would be more informative and interesting if it had some sort of labels.

Agreed, the page feels very undone. No real content besides the image, which is really calling out for more information if you click on it.

That's because it's not done :) We just added a static image for launch (MVP). We'll be adding an interactive version of the Badge Map as soon as we can.

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#175

Post by ryancarson »

hyperberry wrote: post #163

I really like the simple UX, although I believe others have already provided some good suggestions for improvement. I'm among the group of visitors who wants to know more before I click any of the big 3 icons. I'm also interested in improving (and adding to) my novice HTML/CSS skills, so I immediately saw value after reading the home page. It came as quite a shock you wanted $50/month to access your full content! You…

We're always going to charge for our content, because great content is expensive to create. In addition to this, the real value we offer is in guiding our Members through the process of learning and showing them in what order they should learn topics.

The "Sign your team up" link isn't finished yet. Apologies for that.

The pricing is $19/mo for Silver sub-users and $39/mo for Gold sub-users.

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#176

Post by gibybo »

chc wrote: post #147
vijayr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be you could keep the 25$ at the beginning, then give discount to those who unlock badges? say 15$ if you unlock 10 badges, or something like that?

What would the point of that be, other than to give up money? It doesn't make the barrier to entry any less.

It might be useful for retention in some form. If people are earning badges they are probably more likely to retain the membership for longer so they end up spending more in the long run.

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#177

Post by CHsurfer »

ryancarson wrote: post #173
CHsurfer wrote: post #171

This site gives me the impression that after successfully completing the course I will be able to be hired as a developer. Assuming that I pick up the concepts and can apply them - is this reasonable? My gut tells me no, but I'm not in the business. At night (and in the early mornings and sometimes at lunch...) I have been teaching myself to program Rails apps. I use books to learn concepts (and RailsCasts too) and I…

The companies we're partnering with (Living Social, WordPress/Automattic and Bank Simple) will tell us they want to look at folks who meet certain criteria, like this: 1. Looking for a job 2. Have unlocked these badges (as an example): 2a. UX Foundations 2b. Ruby Foundations 2c. Rails Foundations 3c. Node.js Foundations Then we'll present them with those people and they'll choose if they want to approach those folks…

Thanks for the clarification - it helps a lot.

I have to admit that you seem to be offering more value than I realized.

Kudos.

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#178

Post by jcitme »

ryancarson wrote: post #32
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #14

This looks amazing, and I'll be signing up immediately when I arrive home from work today. Really great job, and congrats on launching. My only question thus far: Is there an easy way for me to be informed when new badges/topics/videos are available? Either a digest email or some sort of RSS feed that I could customize based on personal interests would be fantastic.

Thanks for the kind words. On the Library page we list the new badges, but you're right. Not super easy for you. We should hook that up to the @treehouse account.

Badges aside, I have a problem with the business model. Sure, Wordpress/Simple etc are looking for these badges, but not a lot of other places are. What is to prevent someone from getting an account and just downloading all the videos? The value is mostly in the education, not the other stuff you offer. Hopefully this doesn't sound too harsh...

Re: Learn Web Design, Web Development, and iOS Development - Treehouse

#180

Post by potential »

Hi Ryan, I'm really interested in this but are there courses/badges aimed at intermediate and advanced users? If so do these become unlocked? It wasn't clear to me how much depth a certain topic gets covered. For example it would be great if you showed what's 'coming soon' or what you intend to cover at http://teamtreehouse.com/library
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