Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript Interactive Web Pages with JavaScript Traversing and Manipulating the DOM with JavaScript Perform: Traversing Elements with children

fahad lashari
fahad lashari
7,693 Points
Posted by fahad lashari
fahad lashari
7,693 Points

Alternative to this lesson PLEASE...I beg of you

This lesson has been on here for more than a year and from the look of the comments, I am sure many would agree with me when I say that it is simply too confusing and overwhelming to follow Andrew's teaching style. Mostly it seems though he is just talking to himself and the audience (students) are just in the background listening.

Too many different concepts are just thrown at you with little to no explanation and at the same time the assumption is made the students are familiar with most of the terminology used.

I tried multiple times to give Andrew another chance, however by comparison to the other teachers on Treehouse, his content teaching style is simply not viable for majority of the students. SO PLEASE Treehouse can you PLEASE PLEASE get Mr McFarland to cover this topic. I signed up for the Tech Degree and was having a blast learning and was being thoroughly interested in JavaScript. I was for the first time in my life enjoying studying, ALOT! but the lessons by Andrew just brought that interest to a screeching halt.

If any one else is having this problem, have you found any alternative ways to cover this topic? I would greatly appreciate any response. Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

4 Answers

Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points
Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points

Treehouse does update their courses so they don't get too out of date. As it happens an update to this one is currently in QA and is coming out next week.

fahad lashari
fahad lashari
7,693 Points
fahad lashari
fahad lashari
7,693 Points

Thank you! looking forward to it!

miikis
miikis
44,957 Points
miikis
miikis
44,957 Points

Hi Fahad,

There's not much anyone in the Community Forum can do about the quality of Treehouse content. On the flip side, if you have a specific question about where you're stuck, feel free to ask it and I'll try to give you a satisfactory answer ;)

Helmut Granda
Helmut Granda
10,343 Points
Helmut Granda
Helmut Granda
10,343 Points

I would like to add a comment from a positive experience. I find Andrew Chalkley's class excellent! I like how he walks you through his through process of stating the problem and then providing a solution.

Seeing how he navigates the docs is a big plus! I believe many people are quick to jump into Stack Overflow (or similar) expecting some one to help them fix the issues with their code. However, learning how to navigate documentation is a skill that should be mastered by all developers. Knowing how to navigate documentation will take you long ways not just in JavaScript but any other language that you want to learn.

I look forward to watching JS and the Dom 2 but for now I am really enjoying Andrew's class.

Adam Fields
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Adam Fields
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 37,838 Points
Adam Fields
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Adam Fields
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 37,838 Points

I'm having a similar experience to Fahad. I originally had every intention of learning full-stack JavaScript at Treehouse; however, the quality of the JS courses is severely lacking compared to the courses taught by Nick, Guil, Alena (PHP), and Ken (Python).

All of the HTML, CSS, PHP, and Python courses I've done have been top-notch, only rivaled by Laracasts (specific to PHP).

The JavaScript courses seem to take simple concepts and make them much more confusing. I understand JavaScript itself isn't the most intuitive language (especially compared to the elegance of Python); but that's exactly why the quality of the instruction needs to be superlative given how complex full-stack JavaScript can be.