Why I Recommend CodeSandbox for Learning How To Code

Breaking CodeSandboxes is one of the best ways to learn the basics of coding, even with no prior experience. Here’s why.

Most people don’t learn to code with CodeSandbox, but you should! Here’s why. Photo: Simon Hurry Unsplash

I’ve been a fan of CodeSandbox since back in 2019, when I used it to teach myself modern web development.

A few months later, I went to a local hackathon meetup group, and I was so excited to show off what I had built using CodeSandbox.

The person I showed was completely unimpressed.

Honestly, he couldn’t have been less impressed! He immediately opened up a web browser, and he showed me that you can “Inspect” and “View Source” and do what he called “the same thing”: edit the HTML and CSS.

Yeah, bro, I know how the browser works…

I’d been programming professionally for 15 years at that point, and I was genuinely in disbelief that this idiot thought that CodeSandbox with its full, VS-Code-powered IDE (code editor) and npm package management, was exactly the same as “hacking” the HTML and CSS in the browser.

It’s not, at all.

Let me tell you why CodeSandbox is great for learning how to code using modern web development frameworks, even without coding experience.