CodeSchool.com is the most awesome way to learn
On the 1st of April, Glenn Block posted a link that was too good to be true.
I have a habit of checking out most links that don't look like they link to a porn site or some look at photo of me and signup to see me naked. This particular link interested me because his tweet mentioned Backbone, something I've been wanting to learn for a while and that I'm been hoping Derick Bailey would add to his awesome JavaScript video collection: http://www.watchmecode.net (his JavaScript series is absolutely brilliant and I've learnt SO much from him so go support him so he will make more plz kthxbi)
Anyway CodeSchool allows you to do level 1 of most courses for free, and if you like what you try you can purchase the rest of the course. Buying the courses 1 by 1 is a little bit expensive at $55 USD, but it's well worth the money.
You're not getting just a video like you would with sites like Plural Sight, Tekpub, or any of the many other site's popping up lately.
After each lesson in the course, there's a series of challenges which allow you to utilize your new gained knowledge and put it to the test. The Backbone course challenges you to make a small ToDo list application, starting out really basic and slowly modifying the code to follow best practice, or add new features.
Each challenge builds on top of the previous, it gives you a story with some helpful information on functions to invoke or events to listen to, and you can dive back into the slides to double check things, should you forget.
If you get stuck you can ask for hints.
Each time you use a hint, the number of points you can gain from the challenge drops, yes that's right, there's a points counter to entice you to complete the challenges.
To top it all off you get this nifty little public profile with badges to show what you've completed:
This site is just amazing, it really taking learning to a whole new level. You're not stuck with boring old videos that you forget after you've finished watching an hour of content, you spend up to 20 minutes learning a bunch of new stuff which you can use right away in their predefined challenges and get feedback right away. It goes a long way to help you understand what you're doing.
I highly recommend anyone wanting to learn Backbone, grab this course:
http://www.codeschool.com/courses/anatomy-of-backbonejs
Or checkout some of the other courses available:
http://www.codeschool.com/courses
comments powered by Disqus