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How we tested
Our apprentice coder, who has limited experience of computer programming, took five online courses to find out how much and how quickly he could learn. Assessing the site's multimedia content and in-browser text editors he considered ease of use, live feedback and responsiveness.
Decoding the jargon
HTML: The way to mark-up static content such as text, images and lists for use on the web.
CSS: Arranges where HTML content appears and adds design elements such as colours.
JavaScript: Used to add dynamic and interactive content such as quizzes.
Ruby/PHP: Open-source languages that run processes on a server, not in your browser.
**Objective-C:**A complex and powerful language used to build apps for Apple OS X and iOS.
Tuts+
Tuts+ bundles a solid range of video courses with free ebooks and downloadable project files. Videos tend to be desktop screencasts with the occasional quiz, so you'll need your own text editor if you want to play along. Some tutors have a lack of focus and can ramble for minutes at a time, but courses by web-development lead Jeffrey Way, earn the monthly subscription fee for being concise and filled with helpful anecdotes. The free introductory HTML & CSS course (learncss.tutsplus.com) is a perfect starting point for any aspiring developer.
Wired: New content added daily
Tired: No in-browser coding
Score: 4/10
Price: $19/month
Mozilla School of Webcraft Built on the Peer 2 Peer University platform, the Mozilla courses feel too much like a series of wiki documents to compete with the other sites on test. Most challenges are user-generated, and the quality of courses can vary widely. A useful Mentorship scheme helps coding newbies connect with advanced students, and the community is active in discussing common issues -- but it can take so long to wade through cries for help that you're better off Googling for an answer instead.
Wired: Multi-lingual
Tired: Tough to use
Score: 3/10
Price: Free
Note: Mozilla is now focussing on the Webmaker programme, which was released in June 2012.
Codecademy There are no videos here, but in practice this gives Codecademy a more direct user interface. Detailed, quick-fire lessons sit next to a text editor, which auto-formats common characters such as quote marks and brackets to make coding a breeze. It's the most accessible platform in the group, and makes a point of comparing techniques to real-world examples, so you can understand where to apply them.
Wired: Paced learning
Tired: Too good to be free forever?
Score: 8/10
Price: Free
Treehouse Design your own curriculum by checking off topics you want to tackle, then earn badges as you complete stages. The video courses are well produced and show plenty of code in action before throwing you in to a live text editor. Unfortunately, it's slow to check your work, and the frog mascot and childish humour are a pain. But it has plenty of great content and, unlike other sites, it covers iOS coding.
Wired: Feels polished
Tired: Annoying frog
Score: 5/10
Price: $25/month
Code School These courses run for five levels, each with a 10-15 minute video, followed by a series of in-browser code challenges.
The fast presentation style could be more suited to those with intermediate experience, and you'll need to hit pause if you don't want to miss crucial lines of code. The best course proved to be the simple, text-based "Try Ruby", with its chatty Codecademy style and charming hand-drawn art.
Wired: Cheat sheets
Tired: Sound effects
Score: 5/10
Price: $25/month
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
