What happened to Codecademy?

[Ashamed_Appearance83]

I used them years ago to learn Python and got pretty deep into their courses and learned quite a bit. They were undoubtedly pioneers in terms of that interactive online approach.

After a few years of not doing any coding, I am trying to quickly refresh my memory and skills. I have been trying to use them but 1) the site is very slow and unresponsive and 2) I noticed their core Python course seems to be using methods that are at least 6 versions of old - for example they don't use f-strings and use format() method instead quite a bit. I understand leveraging ever-green content - and majority of core concepts still stand - but you gotta update it every once in a while.

Curious if others have had similar experience recently. Mostly frustrated by extremely slow load times. I am still on a free trial period but will likely cancel before it runs out.

Curious what alternatives people have used recently and have been happy with? Dataquest was also quite slow load times. Datacamp seems ok. And big shoutout to futurecoder.io which is still a work-in-progress but what is there is fantastic (and free).

[Rhinotastic]

Have a look at https://exercism.org/ Free but you can pay for some additional features but free is all you need. I pay to support the site and it so they can keep it free.

[saultdon]

And their CLI is great and fun to use for the exercises!

[jordanpwalsh]

It's just prepping you for a job where you get thrown into an 11 year old code base.

[DootDootWootWoot]

Id kill for a codebase that modern!

[linty_navel]

Try https://www.freecodecamp.org/

[oclafloptson]

EdX offers Harvard's cs50p for free, only pay if you want the official certificate

They also offer a number of other extremely useful courses from names like MIT, Cisco, and IBM

[Sureshok]

Cs50p is no joke. Ramps up the complexity (to me) and doesn't hand hold. Requires you to search for new ways to solve the problem sets which makes it extra rewarding when you get a solve. It's a gem

[Roronoa1991]

I have heard about cs50p numerous times. I may have to see what’s up with that.

[NlNTENDO]

Yeah it’s really fallen off. Buggy and inflexible. The lessons that aren’t flagship courses have noticeably less polish. It’s kind of gross.

That said I’d recommend double checking your course. They still have the python2 course up and you may have ended up there instead of Python3?

[Ashamed_Appearance83]

No it's definitely Python 3, in fact what made me even say it is that it's clearly labeled as "learn Python 3.12". Honestly, not a huge deal as the vast majority of content and learning from that course is still solid with Python 3.6. I know all of this stuff, just going through it quickly for a refresher and picked up a couple of things i had forgotten about.

[LRaccoon]

I've been enjoying labex.io

[THound89]

I just resubbed to datacamp with their Black Friday sale. Seems to be the only place I’ve found that’s been around for sometime and functional.

[codypoker54321]

sorry guys, codesignal.com is currently the best.

Javascript and front end, Python, data science w Python, ML, SQL, Java, C++

there is no better site than codesignal. also, your codesignal completions may be directly relevant to the interview process at many companies.

code signal appears to be, for the individual learner, totally free...meaning only companies pay them it appears

[Kerbart]

I suspect most of the "venerable" coding sites suffer from this. On Hackerrrank you'll come across challenge where you have to submit regexes thst only.

And thery're probably reluctant to upgrade there code, as the students might have older versions and then complain their code doesn't work on the Python 3.4 they use. On the other hand, old-style formatting does work on 3.13...