My experience learning with The Odin Project
The Odin Project:
The Odin Project (also known as TOP) is an open-source community and curriculum for learning full-stack web development. The goal of The Odin Project is to provide a complete path for students to go from zero programming knowledge to being employed as web developers while working with other students and picking up the skills to become self-sufficient along the way. They also provide job-seeking guidance on resumes, portfolios, and technical interview prep, The Odin Project does not offer feedback or 1-on-1 support.
They say about themself, “The Odin Project is one of those ‘What I wish I had when I was learning’ resources. Not everyone has access to a computer science education or the funds to attend an intensive coding school and neither of those is right for everyone anyway. This project is designed to fill in the gap for people who are trying to hack it on their own but still want a high-quality education.”
Students of The Odin Project build portfolio projects and complete lessons that are constantly curated and updated with links to relevant resources. Students learn and build dozens of worthy projects, including basic scripts, full programs, games, and websites.
The curriculum is divided into two distinct paths, each covering the subject language in-depth, it’s either Javascript or Ruby on Rails. Each path contains a listing of lessons -articles or videos- interspersed with multiple projects. These projects allow the students to practice what they are learning, to develop and solidify the theoretical knowledge learned in the lessons. Some projects may be included in the student’s portfolio.
The Odin Project doesn’t provide a certificate for course completion. Employers will be much more impressed with your amazing personal portfolio of projects, many of which you’ll hopefully have built with inspiration from The Odin Project.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
- First of all, The Odin Project is completely free, even the students can access the content without making an account, but to keep track of their progress they need to sign up. They tried to link to resources that are themselves free so anyone in the world can use them at any time.
- Any programmer knows you learn best by actually building, and that’s what Odin does, their curriculum is full of projects where you will get your hands dirty, and that will help you build a strong portfolio of work on Github to fill out your resume. Also, you will be able to build stuff on your own and not getting lost in the middle of nowhere.
- When someone works with others, his motivation will increase, so, The Odin Project is committed to connecting students together so they can stay motivated and learn faster by letting the students help each other. There’s always peoples behind you, so helping them will be a great way to have a better understanding and make your learning stick.
- In addition, when you are in despair of your code where it doesn't work or make sense to you, you can find other programmers in The Odin Project community who will encourage you and help you fix your problems and improve your code. They have been in your place before.
- You will learn the most important thing ever: searching for your problems or asking for them. You will get stuck at some point in the curriculum, due to having difficulty understanding or something not working correctly. So, you will be obligated to google this problem, probably someone else has encountered the same problem you had. If you didn’t find a solution, you will need to ask people. You can ask on StackOverflow or on The Odin Project community.
- Like anything in the world, The Odin Project has its downside -in my opinion-, some of the assignments they give you are repeated, so, you will waste your time and find yourself reading the same information you read before.
What Did I Do:
Foundations:
It’s where I started, and mostly where everyone did. Foundations is, as Odin says:” This is where it all begins! A hands-on introduction to all of the essential tools you’ll need to build real, working websites. You’ll learn what web developers actually do — the foundations you’ll need for later courses.” In another way, you’ll learn the basics of front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript which allows you to build a simple website, style it, and making it a little bit interactive. You’ll also learn how the web works and how to think about web programming in the right way.
Full Stack JavaScript:
For me, I choose the Full Stack JavaScript path over the Ruby On Rails path. And I finished the HTML AND CSS course, Odin says about it: “ Good web design doesn’t happen by accident. Now that you’ve gained a strong foundation in programming, this course takes a deeper look at front-end design, expanding on what is covered in Foundations. You’ll learn how to design websites that look great on any device and you’ll be equipped to deeply understand and create your own responsive design framework!”
All projects in this course were clones, every clone was done in another way than the other, and they were just static -NO JAVASCRIPT INCLUDED-. My skills got more advanced using front-end technologies. I got comfortable with putting the right elements in the right places on a page, I learned about dealing with lists, tables, and inputs and styling them, got deeper into CSS by learning about positioning and floating elements, gradients, and backgrounds.
“If you want to make your websites stop looking like they came from the 1990’s, you’ll need to gain an understanding for at least the best practices of design and User Experience (UX). Not knowing this stuff is like charging over the next hill without any idea of why you’re doing it.” That’s why Odin let you learn a little bit about User Experience (UX), and that’s what i have did.
These days you need to make sure your pages display easily on multiple viewport sizes by using fluid layouts and media queries. So, I learned media queries and how to make my webpage responsive. But, there’s something that can save you a ton of time developing standard pages and which come with responsive functionality for free, which is CSS frameworks, like Bootstrap.
Preprocessors can make your life much easier by eliminating code repetition and saving your time and effort writing code, I learned SASS, and I have even used it in the last project to make my own simple grid-based framework.
Also, with Javascript, you will make your websites dynamic and interactive. You’ll create features, stand-alone applications, and projects where you will learn how to manipulate the DOM, use object-oriented programming principles, and build single-page applications with React.
Do I Suggest It?
Of course, I do, and anyone should. The Odin Project is a great place to start your journey to see if you do want a career in the industry without signing up for an expensive Bootcamp because Odin is FREE.
It is very helpful for anyone who wants to learn web development and land a job as a web developer, you will find your skills are getting better, your understanding will evolve, overall you will get better as a web developer. You will learn how to communicate with other programmers, how to ask and search for your problems, how to depend on yourself, and so many other things.
The Odin Project has been great, I definitely enjoy learning and finishing the challenges that come with it, If you’re looking for a place that keeps it real with you, that’s it, Give it a try!
