HTML & CSS Course Omission

Hey Daniel, in some of the other videos they mention other text editors (especially some of the earlier videos where Workspaces wasn't yet implemented). In fact, you don't have to even use Workspaces- feel free to use your own preferred editor to follow along if it better suits you! I like to use Sublime Text 2, but there are many other great editors like Brackets and Notepad++. It's all up to you! Good luck =)

Heya Dan,

As was mentioned, in a lot of the earlier courses they did in fact cover 3rd party editors and such, specifically sublime text, but also mentioned and linked to others. Since they have created the workspace though they have relied strictly on doing all the examples within that.

However, I do agree with what you're saying and do echo your criticisms on this.

Apologies but rant incoming:

While I understand the need to provide a (mostly) hassle free out of the box environment for anyone and everyone to use, at least in the beginning, I feel that it falls short in the later stages and that it eventually does a great disservice. As you mentioned the "budding developers" thing, that's precisely my problem with it. I myself do use ST3 and have used ST2 & 3 since the beginning of my journey here and only dabbled with the workspace occasionally but I also came to Treehouse after going through the html&CSS course on codecademy and had ventured out on my own a bit after that to associate myself with code editors since it's rather important.

But aside from getting familiar with a 3rd party editor which, they honestly can't be expected to cover them all, and that's not what you or I are asking so I'm not implying that either, but there's the issue of setting your projects up locally to work on them. In workspaces, everything is there. You don't have to worry about a thing. No worries about structuring your project folders appropriately, no worries about placing resources in the appropriate folders or whathave you. It's all done for you and that can be frustrating when you're going through a lesson that, on its own, in workspaces, may be a breeze... just follow along, type what they're typing in the video and presto. Instant success. But now go and do that locally and it's a big "uhhhhh... wait what?"

For example, I just took a look at the HTML Video & Audio course the other night. I was able to get through it just dandy until the customization stage. In the video they talk about mediaelement.js and "oh here's the site if you want to get it... but you don't have to worry about that because IT'S ALL IN WORKSPACES!!". Fantastic. I'll be sure to mention that on my resume. "Qualifications: I have no idea how to properly implement something like mediaelement.js but I sure as heck can build one rootin-tootin custom media player on the treehouse workspace!! Well, if it's one of the classes that they mention in the video of course that is... "

I understand that one of the larger aspects of being a coder, a designer... being a developer in general... is a self driven method of exploring, researching and trial and error implementation, which I'm always all about. I go and learn as much as I can but as far as I'm concerned, the custom media players stage was near worthless because it gave me absolutely 0 guidance in how to actually implement it in the real world. I tried doing everything both locally and on my website and to no avail. I had no idea what files I actually needed to have on my server or in my project folder, which sub folders to look into among the myriad of files that come with mediaelement nor how to really do anything with it other than follow along with Nick in the workspaces. I spent about 2 hours trying to figure everything out with reading the mediaelement documentation and to no avail because half of their "help" on the actual mediaelementjs site is just jargon and lingo for those that already know what they're doing anyhow.

I watched and rewatched the course videos... I read the documentation and looked at some other help videos. All said slightly different things about what you need or don't need from the mediaelement.js package. Eventually I just said some expletives and logged off for the night.

Now, with all that being said... I know there's going to be frustration in the learning process. It's part of the game. And I do relish it when there's at least some sliver of knowing how to navigate it because when you do figure it out there's the huge aha! moment and you feel great.

But this is a prime example where they either

1. should NOT be using workspace because as you so rightly pointed out, we're budding developers here... not budding permanent subscribers. The goal here is to prepare people for the workplace and not for the work*space*. To provide skills that makes us "job-ready"... and covering some more advanced topics in workspaces quite frankly is a joke at best and insulting at worst.

2. Offer videos for such things that include the same exact project but using an external setup either on a local environment or using a real life hosting example and how you'd go about it on a remote server. If they can offer 2 part lessons in such things as Linear Gradients & Linear Gradients: Unprefixed, Radial Gradients & Radial Gradients: Unprefixed, then they sure as heck can put the effort into showing you how things are done "on the real" and in an actual setting and not just "hey, here's all the files in workspaces, just... yeah don't worry about the gigantic morass of files there and what they mean or what you should focus on, just watch the pretty highlighted text fly across your screen and mimic what I do."

And I know I'm sounding real snarky right here but I was so pumped to get to that stage of the course and by the time I was done I was just very disappointed and in the end, furious.

Conclusion

Devs... please make some changes here. Most of your stuff is out of this world and I've said it before, y'all have no equals. But this is one glaring shortcoming that you should be concerned about remedying.

STOP relying so heavily on workspaces in later stages and please realize that what seems obvious to you ("oh sure just download from this site and link to files and do some jquery and bam, custom player!") is not so easy and obvious to those in the beginning stages of a particular concept. Some things you guys are ridiculously thorough on things and it's fantastic. It's what's needed. In other instances there's a sense of holding the users hand almost to an annoying level of "omg, we get it.. px, em, relative... move on!". But that's just my own perception of those instances and perhaps just something that I understand easily while others really need that... so better to err on the side of holding the hand of those that need it. But other times the lesson is just like "Yeah here's a bunch of important details that we're just gonna glide over because, well, let's be honest... it's friday, 4:30 and the deadline is in 20min and the British ginger dude is buying rounds for the staff as soon as we're done here. so blah blah workspaces, just use this link and paste this and yadda yadda MDN for more info... yeah, there ya go. Thanks for watching."

Sorry for the rant, love you guys. Cheers and all that.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I had been meaning to write back for a while now.