Learning Code with Codecademy
Two years ago, I learned HTML and CSS through Codecademy, an online learning platform for code. When I saw that one of the weekly assignment options for my EID 100 course was to use Codecademy to learn code and document my experience with it, I thought it was the perfect opportunity for me to use the site again to learn something new.
This time around, I decided to learn Responsive Design. Responsive Design helps make websites visually appealing across many devices and makes websites more accessible. It’s basically an additional level to CSS.
The syllabus for this course is broken down to mainly two different major lessons: Sizing Elements and Media Queries. The course also includes one project and two multiple choice quizzes after the two lessons, but they are only available to paying users. I find that the features that come with a free account is good enough.
The first major lesson, Sizing Elements, is about making the size of certain elements on a webpage relative to other elements on the page. The learning platform looks like this:
The left panel is instructions, the middle panel is the coding area, and the right panel is the webpage tied to the code from the middle panel. I like the layout of everything. This learning page is packed with information and content, but still manages to look simple and clean. Learning on here is easy. The layout hasn’t really change from when I previously used the site two years ago, and I’m happy that it hasn’t.
I like how the course syllabus updates as you complete lessons to show you, your progress. This is what mine looked like after I completed Sizing Elements and just got started on Media Queries:
One thing I really like about Codecademy is that you can always go back to previous exercises in a lesson to review.
This is what my final finished code looked like at the end of the second lesson:
When I finished the course, I was surprised that there wasn’t a congratulatory message or any badges that popped up. When I navigated to my badges page, I could see that it did update for the course I just completed.
That was a bit disappointing because I did remember the badges popping up when you received one back when I first used the site. I think the badges popping up is a good motivator. It gives people a sense of accomplishment and a want to keep going. I feel like for many new users, they wouldn’t even know that badges exist now that they don’t pop up, until they poke around their profile page.
Codecademy is a great site to learn code and I always have fun when using it. I had a great time learning Responsive Design and I’m going to apply the skills I learned to my own website. Maybe now my site will finally look good on mobile! I’ll definitely be keeping my account and using it to learn other forms of code. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take me two years again to get myself to learn something new!