The Odin Project – Learn Web Development for Free

https://www.theodinproject.com

by CoffeeOnWrite • 9 years ago

150 64 9 years ago

theodinproject.com

unclebucknasty• 9 years ago

Wait. Somebody figured out how to do Web development?

tempodox• 9 years ago

Not really.

CoffeeOnWrite• 9 years ago

The Show HN from over 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7466487

Anecdote: I hired an Odin Project "graduate" in early 2015, somebody who had gotten a CS degree 10 years earlier but never done anything with it. The Odin Project had prepared him to hit the ground running on modern web software development, and also prepared him for evaluation for our job, with an impressive capstone project. He was a successful hire without a doubt.

Double_a_923• 9 years ago

What happened with the CS graduate?

jve• 9 years ago

I read it as it is the same person who has CS diploma.

vosper3• 9 years ago

I question starting people on Ruby for web development. It was big and popular, but I feel that the popularity is fading (has faded?) for new projects, and there's a lot of magic in that language, too.

Anyone starting web development now would do well to stick with Javascript. No, it's not the nicest language, but there's no avoided it. And you can always use that on the backend if you have to - and if you need to spend time learning something for the backend part you'd be better served learning about relational databases than Ruby.

Anyway, between JS, HTML, and CSS, you're going to have a lot to learn. At least with CSS these days you can pretty much start with flexbox for layout, and maybe if you're lucky you'll never have to learn all the old horrible methods of getting things to look reasonable - or you'll have a solid foundation when you do encounter them.

gkop2• 9 years ago

When hiring junior developers, I look for experience in at least two general purpose languages, because I think comparing and contrasting at least two languages gives you a valuable and necessary perspective. In web software engineering, Ruby+JavaScript (or Python+JavaScript or Go+JavaScript, etc) is a convenient and powerful way to check this box, but "full-stack JavaScript" falls short.

slaymaker1907• 9 years ago

I think Java would be a better second language than Ruby. It is radically different from JS despite the name and is incredibly useful to know due to its wide usage. It also serves as one or the lingua francas of the CS community (alongside C of course).

Not that I think Java is a pleasant language. It is quite a monstrosity in terms of syntax and verbosity, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful to know.

matthewwiese• 9 years ago

Hah, do you happen to be expecting the need for junior developers in the coming year? ;)

And an actual question: when hiring for [junior] web development roles, would you for example take into account knowledge of non-web languages like, say, 6502 assembly & C++?

I'm curious as in the coming year I'll be graduating and on the hunt. Although I consider myself proficient in JavaScript (and Python to a much greater extent) my hobby interests lie more in microcontrollers, "retro" programming, and just general electronics. Would that sort of background be a boon in your opinion, or would you prefer a candidate with more strength in web technologies? (though by golly I swear I will one day get my homebrew computer connected to the World Wide Web!)

Immortalin• 9 years ago

Problem is, none of the frameworks allows you to get up and running as quickly as Rails. Even Django doesn't come close in matching the sheer amount of magic in the Rails. There are gems available for everything under the sun; it's fun and all to play around with new frameworks but having to reinvent the wheel gets tiresome really quickly. Debugging can be a bit tricky and it's not the most performant framework out there but the overall productivity still outweighs everything else on the long term. Nothing else (except perhaps MS Access and their RAD tools) comes close to the speed at which one can get a CRUD app up and running and CRUD apps are pretty much 80% of all web apps.

computerex• 9 years ago

The nodejs ecosystem with npm allows you to create CRUD apps very quickly. Look into express.js.

Also, my experience with the nodejs ecosystem has in general been better than with Ruby Gems. I have always hated Ruby magic and the problems it causes in gem incompatibilities.

shagie• 9 years ago

Magic is wonderful when it works right, and painful when it goes wrong. I will absolutely agree that the magic built around speedy crud apps that handle 80% of what a web developer does making it only take a small fraction of time is a wonderful thing for productivity.

The problem with the magic for the 80%, is that the remaining 20% takes up the remaining 80% of the time. With the first 80% of the delivery in 20% of the time, the final 20% taking 4x longer because of the lack of understanding of the magic gives no advantage in the end.

Thats if everything goes well. If the 80/20 rule fails, you get the ninety-ninety rule ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule ).

RoR lets one build crud without understanding what goes on beneath the ActiveRecord. RoR is great when there is low complexity of the code and it is easy to follow the data through the pipes. Once it goes beyond that, adding complexity to that with the spooky action, highly declarative style that RoR encourages it can be painfully difficult to do - and something that far beyond what the 'write crud in 30 mintes/hours/days' classes offer.

Beyond that, with the failure to understand the before and beneath, one gets the impossible to debug bugs and security holes that lie within libraries that have been imported ( https://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/43394068341/ruby... ).

vosper3• 9 years ago

But I think if you really are just starting out learning programming then it's still a lot of effort to get a Rails system up and running (you need a database, too, which is another new thing) compared to the bare minimum, which is to use something like Meteor, Firebase, or even (gasp!) Mongo.

I'm not saying that Rails has no place, and it might well be the best next step, but I wouldn't put it (or Django, maybe Express) in a course for absolute beginners. Perhaps in the follow-up course :)

wolco2• 9 years ago

Getting php with the laravel framework running is much easier and quicker

icelancer2• 9 years ago

none of the frameworks allows you to get up and running as quickly as Rails

Nearly every single PHP framework is faster and more intuitive to deploy than Ruby on Rails.

sjellis2• 9 years ago

For me the value of Rails is that it puts a lot of good practices into every application.

Once you are more advanced as a developer or have a larger project then you might not like some of the choices that Rails makes, but it not only saves work but does more than most teams could or would realistically do if they have to assemble an application with just Sinatra or Express as a base.

For learners, having the framework lay out known-good stuff in a standard structure for all of the dozen or so elements that a Web application needs is incredibly helpful. You can let Rails create the application skeleton, and then work through the different parts, knowing that it all hangs together.

nickstefan12• 9 years ago

This assumes you want anything to do with the front end :).

Maybe a better tact at why JavaScript first: people are far more likely to hire junior front end people than junior backend.

edoceo• 9 years ago

This is how I hire

aaronchall• 9 years ago

I question starting people on Ruby for web development.

This.

What's a synergistic language? Javascript (i.e. it's required learning for the browser, and you get the backend with Node - and you point this out.) Javascript has advantage from browser monopolization.

What's a great and increasingly popular language for the backend? Python. And Python is so nice that we don't need a slogan about how "Guido is nice so we are nice" (with apologies to Matz and the dwindling Ruby community).

Write your software so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, not so complex that there are no obvious ones (Hoare, 1980). Ruby is way more complex than Python because there's a bajillion different ways to do it.

To me the only point of learning Ruby is if you're already in a job that maintains a Rails app.

The battle for the supreme interpreted language isn't over, but, like Perl, it's my humble opinion that you can count Ruby out.

RangerScience4• 9 years ago

we don't need a slogan about how "Guido is nice so we are nice" there's a bajillion different ways to do it

I would definitely say that these are serious strengths of Ruby, not weaknesses. Here's why:

Ruby is foremost concerned with the experience of the person using the tool. To use an analogy, many of us spend a lot of time finding keyboards and layouts that harm us less, or do not actively harm us. You would avoid using a hammer if the grip was painful to hold.

Ruby may appear to have a bajillion ways to do something, but actually, it's just many different ways to communicate the same few things to other people. Since you are free (and able) to use any of many ways, you can choose the one that is actually the most communicative, not the one that should be the most communicative. But, as you begin to peel back that facade and understand what's underneath (that everything is a thing that is a combination object, reference, and function), you see that it's actually pretty simple.

The result of this is that in Ruby, you can - and can benefit from - deeply considering the structure of the thoughts that code describes. Particularly in Rails, you can consider the idea of the thing you are dealing with, and then you write down the description of that thing; Ruby magic then makes that description code.

That is, ultimately, why I think Ruby is a "synergistic" language, and an excellent one with which to start: it [can] teach you to think in a way that's independent of any given language - about what is occurring for the computer, and more importantly, what is occurring for the programmer. You can then take that learning and apply it everywhere else.

Mostly, I just know how bloody frustrating it is to work with (most) libraries and APIs that aren't from (or inspired by) Ruby-land, and how (generally) easy and convenient it is to work with things from (or inspired by) Ruby (and Rails).

cutler• 9 years ago

As someone who prefers Ruby to Python I lament the odd coincidence that Ruby, the language most strongly influenced by Perl, seems to be suffering the same fate as its predecessor - fiddling while Rome burns. Ruby needs 3x3 yesterday to compete with all the languages that are eating its lunch but I doubt if we'll see it before 2020. Worst case scenario is Ruby 3x3 turning into another Perl 6.

bdcravens2• 9 years ago

Probably the same reason there's so much jQuery in the front-end curriculum. Five years from now it may not be true, but there's still a ton of jobs in Ruby and jQuery. (more so than in some of the "cool" stacks)

Double_a_923• 9 years ago

Yeah. You just don't hear about those because people are actually working instead of writing medium.com posts about cool stacks. :^)

RangerScience4• 9 years ago

Based on what I've seen "in the wild", my current recommendation is to first learn the basics in Ruby (a week or two - from basic arithmetic through objects), and then jump to Javascript.

This is primarily because most of the "learn X" that I've seen for Javascript is pretty web-centric, while the "learn Ruby" things that I've seen are much more general CS. So the idea is to first get a basic grounding in general programming, and then jump into the thing you'll use a lot for your particular application.

Example: Learning about scope in JS versus basically anything else.

Also, Rails really does encode basically all the best-practices - so when you literally don't know any better, you can still succeed. And then when you move away from Rails, you have a known-good way to start anything.

jaequery• 9 years ago

im not so sure if js is the right choice for beginning developers. i actually would not encourage beginning developers to jump into javascript. well, im assuming we are talking full stack here and not just client side, as the state of js is in flux and the js fatigue is real. and i cant imagine letting beginning developers to go through that even when experienced devs are having trouble dealing with it.

basically nodejs is not just getting into express anymore. although optional, most likely you will soon have to get into things like react, flux, transpiling, and understanding immutable and fuctional programming, which are all IMO a bit too much for developers to jump in to. also, js is currently changing at a rapid pace, what they learned a year ago is most likely obsolete in todays standards, ie: es5/6/7/next. i have not seen a language change so many times in such a short period of time, i cant imagine how beginning developers can deal with it.

i actually had a chat with recently grad bootcampers who went through a 3months courses of rails and then nodejs/react from General Assembly in LA. their responses to rails was easy to learn and they picked it up right away. but once they got to react/nodejs their experiences were something closer to horror.

id say js indeed was a good choice for beginners 3 - 4 years ago but now there are so many baggages involved such as dealing with setting it up through webpack and its many ways to transpile such as esnext/jade/stylus/etc.

so unless you have a few years of programming experience, i would not recommend devs to go through js at this time.

basically i can teach someone rails on how to build real world applications in a few weeks. but with js, id still be explaining the internals like what is a promise, async vs synchronous function, etc. and this even before diving into the world of redux, map reducers, webpack, immutablejs, higher order functions, and ... the list goes on.

anyway you take it, its a long road ahead with js, much longer than most people will tell you.

ryanSrich• 9 years ago

I tend to agree. Ruby isn't super applicable in 2017 either. Most tech companies have moved to a microservices architecture and while they may have some legacy Ruby hanging around, it's unlikely they're building anything new with it.

Someone learning web development now has a long road ahead of them. They'll need to learn everything. Not just some backend language, but all the front-end frameworks, functional programming, Sass, build tools, typescript, etc. The list is endless.

WillyOnWheels• 9 years ago

I question starting people on Ruby for web development.

news.ycombinator.com and its various tentacles runs on Ruby and Arc

swsieber2• 9 years ago

Right. There's a lot of stuff that's in use I wouldn't recommend for starting with.

KevinMul3• 9 years ago

I'm one of the maintainers of the project, I think that Ruby is still a good language for beginners to learn programming.

Ruby has very expressive syntax, allowing beginners to focus more on the core programming concepts. Its object model also makes it a nice language to learn the basics and best practices of OOP.

The resources out there for beginner programmers and Ruby are also top notch and the community is very friendly to beginners.

This is completely anecdotal, but we've had a fairly decent number of students come into the chat rooms telling us they started with javascript as a beginner but weren't getting it, ruby was much easier for them to get up to grips with.

I admit that I've seen a few students put off with the magic in Ruby, but those really have been a very small minority of students compared to those who really embraced learning it.

In saying all this, we have plans to focus more of our efforts on Javascript and give students the option to choose a javascript track in the curriculum.

master_oogway• 9 years ago

If you are writing RDBMS centric apps, the way your app interact with your DB matters a lot, maybe even more than choice of a programming language. This is where ruby has real superstars, Sequel and ActiveRecord. Nothing I've seen in other languages comes close to Sequel's power, expressiveness and flexibility to query databases. This is the main reason I use ruby. On top of that, ruby is so elegant, it often puts a smile on your face, when you realize how elegantly you have solved a particular problem.

YorickPeterse• 9 years ago

    I question starting people on Ruby for web development.

Heavens forbid using a popular, practical language combined with a mature and even more popular web framework.

    Anyone starting web development now would do well to stick with Javascript.

Yes, let's recommend people to use a language where the things they learn (to use) stop being maintained/used/relevant 1 month later.

    And you can always use that on the backend if you have to

You can use Ruby in the frontend as well: http://opalrb.org/

    and if you need to spend time learning something for the backend part you'd be better 
    served learning about relational databases than Ruby.

What? Learning Ruby doesn't somehow mean you can't learn about relational databases.

When learning/teaching something you very much want to pick something that:

1. Has been around for at least 5 years

2. Is actively used, maintained, and overall has proven itself

3. Has good documentation and tooling

4. Perhaps has programs to help people getting started (Rails Girls, PyLadies, etc)

5. Is still around 5 years from now

Ruby and Rails are a perfect choice for this, though Rails (just like most frameworks out there) _is_ a bit complex for total beginners.

vosper3• 9 years ago

I was trying to suggest that it's already a lot to learn Javascript, CSS and HTML for absolute beginners. I don't think adding Rails to the mix does anything except make things more complicated. In another comment, I added that I wouldn't use Django, either, and suggested that Meteor or Firebase are probably a better place to start brand-new developers. The fewer new things you're throwing at them in one go, the better.

And if you look at the recently published (and fairly well received) IEEE language rankings, you'll see that Ruby is ranked 9th for the number of jobs, and has Java, C#, Python, and PHP ahead of it - all languages with one or more major web frameworks. Any of them would be a better choice for someone looking for work, according to these charts.

Also, let's be honest - in the scheme of things, no-one uses Ruby on the front-end.

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programm...

srikz• 9 years ago

Thanks for making this. Quick feedback: The 'Points to Ponder' section in the 'Javascript Basics' course should probably be put in a Bootstrap Well. On browsers/OSs where the scroll bar isn't shown unless you scroll, it can easily be missed. I feel if it has to be a scroller within a scroller, it should be visibly distinguished. Good luck!

scyclow• 9 years ago

The fact that their website looks like garbage on mobile doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in me.

gkop2• 9 years ago

Perhaps they make up for this with a hilarious Contact Us page? https://www.theodinproject.com/contact

sjroot• 9 years ago

Not really.

qmarchi• 9 years ago

I spy with my little eye, way too much italicize.

KevinMul3• 9 years ago

Hey, one of the maintainers of the project here. The website was hastily threw together a few years back to host the curriculum. Its never been that great. We are working hard on rectifying that with a complete redesign though https://staging-odin-project.herokuapp.com/

bdcravens2• 9 years ago

Interesting that the graphic for "Build Your Own Tools" is the XCode icon, even though this is a web development course, not a mobile one.

olegious• 9 years ago

Is there a Python version of this?

hackermailman• 9 years ago

w/Django yes https://www.springboard.com/learning-paths/web-development-p...

There's also this Java/Typescript curriculum https://www.edx.org/micromasters/software-development

rolae• 9 years ago

I am currently learning with the odin project. I see most of the discussion so far focused on whether ruby is right language. I think the project is very valuable not for its choice of language but for its overall excellent content and approach. A few examples

- When doing my first lessons on ruby you are asked to read several tutorials. I thought, well I already learned that, but in every article I managed to find something new.

- It uses a multitude of other learning sources, does not even try to cover too much themselves. So you get to learn in very different ways. Reading good articles, watching some talks, downloading a repo where you need to write the code to make the test run successfully. Overall I feel, I get the best content, not because they write the best content (who could do that for all the subjects?), but it points you to great content.

- Contrary to many online tools, it forces you to work on your own system, which is a good thing.

- It often forces you to define the problem you are solving yourself. Many online courses make it too easy, you just learn coding. You don't learn to structure the problem.

- It also tries to give you a solid programming knowledge before going into web development. I really appreciate that. It's so easy to learn some angular or vue.js, then you... just need to fetch some data, ah how do I store data, oh and authentication and authorization, oh and... and quickly you get lost. I think it's is very beneficial to first get some solid programming knowledge before diving into the whole server / db / frontend stack.

So I can highly recommend this approach. BTW: even the creators are thinking of driving the course more towards JS (https://github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum/issues/5633)

edit: formatting

snowcrshd2• 9 years ago

Is this still active? I had the impression they (the project's creators) had left this in favor of Viking Code School [1].

Apparently Viking Code School has both Ruby and JS separate tracks (I may be misremembering, though)

[1] https://www.vikingcodeschool.com

weston• 9 years ago

Odin, iirc, is for people who are more self-guided. Viking seems to be for those who need more help (mentors, tutors, etc.)

KevinMul3• 9 years ago

Hey,I'm one of the maintainers of the project and can ensure you its very much alive :)

Erik the original creator of The Odin Project, has moved on to focus on Viking. But theres a bunch of us working on improving the project.

snowcrshd2• 9 years ago

That's great to know! The work you guys do is awesome!

ceautery• 9 years ago

From the "Handling a job offer" page:

"they've been totally in control of the process until now and they've probably dragged their feet because they can (who knows, an even better developer might show up, right?)."

I don't care about the which-language-is-best-to-start-with debate that is being argued in full force here. If you want to rails, knock yourself out. If you want to JS, woo! JS!. I care a lot about seeing your potential employer as an antagonist. They have just indicated to you that they like you enough to invite you to join them. Negotiate, sure, but assume good faith. And the very idea that they were waiting for a better candidate who didn't show up undervalues you. YOU were the one that impressed them most. How well you code was only a part of their choice. They liked your personality best, too, and your honesty, and your dedication, and that indefinable other thing that's hard to quantify.

They are likely the good guys, and they see you the same way. Now go ask for a better salary, or more vacation, but don't assume the worst.

wyqydsyq• 9 years ago

The project itself is a great concept but pushing people into RoR and jQuery? Really? Come on, it's 2017. Ruby is hardly a marketable skill, there are very few agencies still utilising it on new projects. I'd also be shocked to see a new project built with jQuery in this day and age.

Teach beginners backend JavaScript with Node.js. It's not a matter of personal preference, JavaScript is objectively easier for beginners to learn and utilise for backend programming because arbitrarily introducing another language when they already know front-end JS increases cognitive load for no benefit.

peternicky• 9 years ago

This is an example of a terrible web app. I think a company that provides a course to learn web development should put in the effort to make their website a shining example of the best techniques and technologies. This looks like it was made by an amateur.

The Odin Project – Learn Web Development for Free

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