Code Academy

whiteskies

For those who finished a course with Code Academy what do you think? Lets say someone said if you learn (insert scripting language here) I guarantee you a job. Would Code Academy give you everything you need to be successful at that job? I would hate to go through the course and not be able to perform on the job. Which ultimately would lead to getting fired 2 days later. Just curious on your thoughts

Chadius

There is not instruction and projects to go thru, to be a junior developer. Code academy does a good job at showing you different languages and seeing if you enjoy them. Then you can go further if you are enjoying and understanding the language.

I took two python courses thru Coursera. Afterwards I still don't think I could do it full time. When I have time, I have used some scripts to make my job better. Udemy and Lynda have longer courses, with a ton of projects to help you along. But out of all the free course places, code academy is lowest in preparing you.

Kinet1c

If you take python, it does a good enough job of explaining variables, loops, arrays etc but personally I think you'd be better off looking at the python challenge as it introduces you to libraries which are very very useful. A combo of codecademy, learn python the hard way and the python challenge should set you up nicely for Python scripting.

DoubleNNs

If you want to be a developer, no code academy would not give you everything you'd need for the job. Not even close.
I don't think it'd even give you everything you need to start scripting.

It is, however, a great first step. And you can blitz through the courses pretty quickly. I think I did over 50% of the Python course over 2 days after coming home from work.

Grab a few books on your language of choice. Create a GitHub and create side projects. Look at other people's code to see how they code. Join a few IRC or Slack channels focused on the language you picked. Learn some basic Algorithms, Design Patterns, and Big O. Doesn't necessarily have to take a long time, but it definitely won't be easy.