Wow. I really disagree. I suppose it's hard for me to decide if I am a "total beginner" or "slightly intermediate" beginner, but either way, I approached the Javacript Codecademy about 2-3 months ago with a promise to myself to finish it, no matter what, and as a true beginner in my own mind.

I found the lessons and explanations generally very strong. There is A LOT of review, and I mean a lot. So, if one teacher's explanation doesn't work for you, wait 5 exercises and a huge review of the concepts will soon follow.

I understand the argument that there is "no context." Often, I find myself wondering how I get from recursively counting sheep to building a real-live website/app. But, big point here: as a beginner, I can't handle context. I need something very boiled down. As far as Codecademy teaching me the basic, boiled down concepts, I feel it has succeeded amazingly with this. I am almost done with THE ENTIRE javascript track and have learning tons. In fact, I can now pair with my husband and vaguely get what he is doing. "Oh yeah, there is your array of arrays and objects!" type stuff.

In reference to getting stuck, yea, okay sometimes that happened to me. The first thing I did was look at their Q&A forums, and someone usually had the same problem as me. There was already several solutions and explanations posted. I read through their code and then blindly fixed my own. If a student is copying and pasting, well, they are just cheating themselves. I don't believe there is anything wrong with looking at the correct code and then going back to your own and rewriting it a few times to make sure you understand. This was my approach. If this didn't work, I was proactive by going to the internet and googling things. This often worked to solve my confusion and taught me things about how "real coders" solve their problems. If I was still stuck, I could always wait until my husband got home from work, but this has rarely ever occurred. (I know not everyone has this resource and all, but he wasn't that crucial to my codecademy learning as I did codecademy during the day by myself). I have only felt a few times, in the entire Javascript track, of over 200 or so exercises, that I had to ask a programmer directly for help.

Overall, I really cannot relate to the qualms others have with codecademy. If you are expecting something magical to happen... well... yea, they don't magically make you a hirable Javascript expert in 2 short months, and, yea, not every exercise is great. Every learner, no matter WHAT platform they are using to educate themselves, should/must take some responsibility for helping themselves out of problems by going to the Q&A or to the web, or occasionally, asking a programmer friend (most of us have at least one of those). I believe that with these tools available, the RARE Codecademy issue I ever have is quickly solved. But again, even needing to do this for me was very rare, as the lessons were generally good.

So, this beginner gives them an A, after the whole Javascript track completed. I know a lot more now than I did before, and I credit Codecademy for that. I don't think they sell this as a "2 months to becoming a Javascript ninja." They did, however, tell me I would learn a lot about basic concepts, and that I did.