Why is Treehouse truncating the Full Stack JS techdegree and track?

Hi Michael!

You actually hit on the reason behind many of the changes in the FSJS Techdegree in your last sentence, which is to prepare folks for their first developer jobs.

So for example, one of the courses that was removed from the TD was about unit testing. Unit testing is incredibly useful and a valuable skill to have but it isn't necessarily something you need to know in order to land your first dev job.

The idea behind many of the tweaks to the TD curriculum is to keep the focus of the track on the core skills and knowledge that employers are most likely to be looking for in new developers. While some content has been removed from the TD path, there has also been a lot of new content either added or updated over the last year and that trend will continue in 2020 as well.

Also, keep in mind, that when you sign-up for the Techdegree you also get access to the full Treehouse library. So even if a course or topic is removed from the TD track you will still have access to that content. So from that perspective, you aren't really "missing out" on any content just because it is removed from the track. If there is a course or topic that interests you the option to work through that material is still there.

I hope that helps!

Lee

Hey Michael, thanks for reaching out with your concerns. I totally hear where you are coming from. It's natural to be curious about the actual value of any resource we are considering investing in. And a healthy skepticism is pretty much always a good idea. It's probably best to avoid calling someone else's hard work "total garbage"; I would politely and respectfully discourage you from that sort of thing in the future. I mean I get it if the PHP TD is not for you. But there is a lot of value in those lessons, units and projects, nonetheless. The curriculum covers the gambit from the basics of DOM manipulation and styling, all the way to building out full-fledged REST APIs complete with user registration and authorization. It covers the under-the-hood stuff as well as the concept of using PHP frameworks. The point being to get you up to speed on how it all works so you can apply what you know to whatever framework a company you're interviewing with might be using at the time. Over time, this approach has proven far more valuable to learners than drilling down on a single framework since there are so many and they all have the potential to change pretty quickly, and maybe most importantly, who knows what cool new framework will come along tomorrow to make the current ones obsolete. Besides, once you're comfortable with the nuts and bolts, getting up to speed on any framework worth its salt shouldn't be a huge lift.

All told, I would say thousands of hours go into crafting something like a Techdegree, with many talented professionals weighing in and debating on what to add, what to leave out, how to craft the smallest detail, and how to assemble the thing as a whole. And everyone here at Treehouse is thoroughly dedicated to our students and their education. So rest assured, Treehouse isn't going downhill. There are no efforts to water anything down, or to push product that we don't believe in. There's just the fun, never-ending job of trying to keep up with this fast paced industry, and continually improving our processes and product with each iteration so we can continue to get our students as job ready as we possibly can. That's what it's all about, my friend.

Thanks again for reaching out with your concerns, and have an awesome rest of your week, Michael.

Hi there, Michael Cook ! I'm the Student Success Specialist for the PHP Techdegree. First, I want to thank you for your feedback. It's always nice to get something actionable. I appreciate that.

As far as JavaScript, we do require that students at least learn some basic JavaScript. I can tell you that for the fourth project in the Techdegree the only way that it is possible to receive an "Exceeds Expectations" rating there is to use JavaScript. The "Exceeds" simply aren't possible without it.

As for the decision to use Slim, I believe the decision was made because introducing people to a microframework is a great way to get them started with the MVC design pattern without so much of everything looking like it's happening by magic. I dare say we would probably agree that the Eloquent ORM makes dealing with databases way easier than writing everything with a functional/procedural type approach with the built-in PDO object But obviously, they didn't want to leave out working with the PDO because that would be leaving out a big part of the PHP language.

Personally, I would love to see more advanced terminal courses and potentially even some Linux courses and will be sure to bring that up with the education team. It's a great suggestion! Remember, that you can always leave suggestions for new content with the Support team by clicking on the Support button at the top of this page. We do take suggestions to heart.

As for the "bigger" frameworks, project 8 uses a good bit of Symfony to accomplish the user authentication and authorization. We also have content in production (or soon to be in production) but I have no estimated time on its release and can't really comment further

I can tell you, though, that we have PHP Techdegree graduates who are currently employed as developers today. If a Techdegree doesn't currently fit your learning style or you think something is missing, check back. These things are constantly iterated upon, revisited, and scrutinized for any "pain points" and anything we might can do better. I can assure you that feedback like yours is taken into account and we try and act on that... not just jot it down on a notepad or toss it aside. I can personally assure you that much of what you mentioned is being worked on right now

Hope this provides some perspective!

Michael we use Slim to build quite a few products where I work. So I wouldn't discount the value of learning a microframework such as Slim. As an expert PHP developer that has 20 years experience in web development, as you get better at coding you move away from the large frameworks that may not be written in a S.O.L.I.D. way and for me a microframework like Slim was the perfect compromise.

Hey Michael,

I agree that most job listings do ask for those. I just wanted to point out that there is value and re-world use cases for using a micro-framework. As for the frameworks you listed, Laravel is the one to learn out of those. In my opinion its the best written of all them.