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
V Donovan
3,376 PointsQuestion for the Treehouse Staff
I am new to coding and, therefore, make little mistakes in my code. Because there appears to be no way to access the solution to the coding problems, I would either have to pose a question to the community each time I make a mistake, which will likely be frequent, or just skip the question, which I hate to do because I learn a lot from the coding exercises. Have you considered allowing the student to see the solutions once they have tried to solve the problem? This can be really helpful to the learning process.
4 Answers
Jason Anders
Treehouse Moderator 145,860 PointsHey Victoria,
I've found that almost all questions and/or problems I've had with the challenges can be answered by just searching the forum. What I do is open another tab in the browser and go to the Community. I will then copy/paste the question into the search bar (or just the key sentence if the question is really long). This works about half the time (more if it's an older course you're taking).
If that doesn't work, I will copy / paste the lines of code from the challenge window into the forum search bar. Sometimes you just need a few lines of the main code that was pre-loaded, or if no code was pre-loaded, just paste the code you typed, because there's a very good chance someone else did exactly like you. Copy/pasting the code will work almost every time.
So, give those tricks a shot. Then you can just go through all the other posts, and you will probably (almost always) find the answer you need. I think there's only been a few times that I couldn't find one and had to post it to the Forum (This will happen more often on the course that are brand new, as not many have taken it yet.
But, also remember, that the Community is always happy to help. If you get stuck, someone is usually ready and waiting to help. Keep Coding!
V Donovan
3,376 PointsThank you Jason! I will give that a try.
I do understand that employed programmers seek out solutions/help online and perhaps Treehouse is trying to get students used to doing that, however I think in the early stages of learning it would be very helpful and less frustrating for budding coders for Treehouse to set up something that allows a student to see a solution after several tries at a problem. I would imagine it would not be too difficult to add that feature in.
Kristopher Van Sant
Courses Plus Student 18,830 PointsAlong with what Jason said, quite a few answers can be found in the videos so taking a moment to go back and review a video can be very helpful. And when you don't find your answer that way or in the forums, google is always there to help.
However, I definitely understand the frustration, especially for newer ones. I do believe Treehouse is trying to install good habits early on by, like you said, getting students used to having to search for answers on their own and being comfortable asking for help (although I'm not sure this is ever clearly stated). These are such important skills to have that I think it would actually be more harmful to let newbies see the answers immediately, without having to dig for them. But I do like your thought of only seeing the solution after you've tried several several several times. The answer could be more detailed and include links to where it was in the videos and to where you can find more information. That or maybe there could be the option to see some more hints, and once you've gone through all the hints and still can't solve the problem, it would walk you through the answer.
Until then, as Jason mentioned, the Community is always here to help and support each other! :)
V Donovan
3,376 PointsThank you Kristopher!