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Hello fellow online knowledge seekers! I'm really excited about this one. Those of you who read this blog regularly will know I am a big fan of Codecademy for learning how to code. The interactive element is so intuitive and there's not really been anything out there that can compete... until I found out about Educative.io!
When I first saw this advertised, I was skeptical but intrigued. Codecademy has shined as the go-to platform for interactive, in the browser programming courses for years now - but maybe there's a new kid on the block who can provide something even better? I took a deep dive into Educative.io to find out if it really is as good, or better than Codecademy.
Not particularly relevant to the purpose of this review, but from a web developers perspective their website is designed beautifully, looks great and is marketed very well. More importantly for you, the user experience is great too. You can tell they’ve put effort into making the platform easy to use for everyone.
I mention this because I’ve reviewed plenty of education platforms that have a great idea – and even great content but they are let down on the execution of the project. If you’re not a developer, you might not even think about it but you’ll find out that the way a website is put together seriously affects how the users interact with it and how much they use it.
This isn’t just relevant to the marketing team at Educative.io – it’s important for you too. Learning stuff is hard, and can be frustrating. You’ll probably be pulling your hair out at some points no matter how smart you are. When you’re in those stages of frustration, doubt and confusion even a small issue with the user experience or frustration can mean you give up, sometimes just for a day or two, sometimes completely (especially at the beginning of your development journey – newbies beware! Make it easy for yourself).
In terms of what Educative.io states they can provide you… it’s a promise of making learning a wide variety of programming concepts and implementation affordable, easy, fun, enjoyable and engaging.
They do this by providing unlimited access to the entire Educative platform with one monthly plan (although we do recommend that if you are serious, get the 1 year or 2 year plan because there is a very large discount if you opt for that option). This makes it very affordable for most people – and they even provide country specific discounts to adjust the courses to the cost of living as much as possible.
Just visit this page and it will automatically redirect you to the page relevant for the country you are living in and give you a local price suited to your countries economic status. I really love this – it’s unfair that in some parts of the world access to online learning can be 50% of your average monthly salary instead of 5%! Educative does their part to solve this inequality, and I commend them for that.
Unlike other learning platforms, they have a unique, interactive style of learning to code. You aren’t just limited to watching videos or reading text, you actually get an in-browser coding environment to learn. This means that you aren’t stuck watching videos but never actually DOING anything (Hello 2x video speed gang).
A lot of people learn best by doing, and passively watching videos is an easy trap to fall into. You feel like you’re learning, but really you’re not activating the parts of the brain you need to be activating to really make it stick.
Whatever learning path you are on, you will most certainly benefit from the ability to implement code snippets directly in the browser and get feedback on your code STRAIGHT AWAY. There’s no sitting there, following along a video tutorial getting confused why code isn’t working, submitting questions on a forum and waiting for somebody to MAYBE help you out. With Educative, because everything is directly in their browser, any issues you have can be dealt with immediately and you get feedback straight away to help you figure out the problem on your own – increasing your problem solving skills to boot!
There’s a good variety of different individual courses included in the monthly subscription. Similar to other online learning platforms such as Zero To Mastery Academy, you pay one fee and get access to all of the educative courses. There’s too many for me to list here, but I’ll talk about some of my favorite ones and why I think they’re great – if you want to take a deeper look at what’s available you can take a look here for a full look at what’s on offer.
There are a few different learning tracks in the web development area on Educative, you can learn to front-end skills and back-end. There’s everything you need to become a full-stack web developer in 2022. I myself took the PHP Web Development learning track because I wanted to brush up on my skills. I mostly use Python these days, but I do still have a variety of websites based on PHP (specifically client websites using WordPress, learning PHP allows you to make WordPress plugins and themes).
Interestingly while taking this course, I realized I’ve been using some outdated techniques (even on this website itself… oops) and I was pleased to learn some new concepts that are hopefully going to make me a more experienced developer. The difficulty level of this learning path seemed quite easy to me, but I do already have experience. I do think a complete newbie would feel challenged but comfortable doing this course. If you’re looking to become a web developer, I would definitely recommend it.
I loved the fact that at the end of the project, you’ve built a real-world example of a useful program. It’s something you could happily use as a base for a new project, or even show off on your resume/CV to potential recruiters.
It’s one of the most in-demand skills this year and probably for the foreseeable future – machine learning & artificial intelligence. A wonderful mixture of a science program and a technology program. It’s perfect for those who love the idea of turning data into something beautiful and useful. (Also not bad for those who just want to turn their nerdiness into lots of $$$$. It pays well for sure…)
Using the command-line terminal featured in these projects you can easily learn the practical skills to begin your career path to machine learning engineer without ever leaving the browser. You’ll learn how to build the architecture for systems that will allow you to run your own algorithms and integrate those algorithms into real life projects. You can learn how to build an algorithm that ranks things in a search engine (similar to Google, handy to know if you ever want to get into marketing as well…).
You’ll learn how Natural Language Processing works – gaining the functional programming skills and basic concepts to build your own Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. I personally have made a little bot that scrapes different accounts I keep and then calls me reporting statistics to me every morning. A kind of ultra nerdy, ultra cool alarm clock.
This may or may not be important to you depending on if you already have a job or if you are learning to program as a hobby – but if you’re looking to change careers or get started in tech – learning how to interview is perhaps one of the biggest skills you need to learn.
Learning the right algorithmic concepts, preparing for the job interview questions ahead of time, knowing what actual company questions will be asked and feeling comfortable answering coding questions will give you a massive advantage when it comes to getting a job in tech (or getting a raise or moving to a more senior position in another company).
They have mock interviews for pretty much every type of tech interview you are going to have. From beginner interviews to advanced interviews, they give you the relevant interview experience you need to walk into an interview feeling as confident as you can be. Technical interview preparation is often the deciding factor between getting a “Yes!” or the dreaded “I’m sorry…”
Yes, their enterprise package is a fantastic resource for business owners and managers who want to quickly onboard and up-skill new and existing staff members. I use it myself to train my small development team, and I’m sure it would work just as well in larger teams too.
My staff members have tried pretty much every course platform out there (thanks to this blog…) and pretty much everyone agrees that the text and interactive experienced based nature of Educative.io means they learn a lot faster and a lot easier. This saves me time and money as the business owner, and also makes the process a lot less frustrating and boring for the staff members!
That being said, everyone is different and while I think most programmers are going to love the style of Educative.io, some may not. Thankfully they offer a free 7 day trial of their Enterprise edition, so you can just let your team have a play with it for a week and give you feedback on whether it was useful for them as individuals, too!
I’m a real big fan of skill assessments. It’s not uncommon for us humans to not know what we don’t know (How can we!)
Tools like Educative’s Skill Assessment platform allows you to take a short quiz and then get customized recommendations on what to learn to close any gaps in skills you might have.
I took the assessment for Python expecting myself to get 100% (rather arrogantly…) Turns out I got some learning to do still.
Yes! It really is. I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with Educative.io. For ages I have recommended Codecademy as the go-to option for interactive coding lessons, but not anymore. Now my favorite is Educative.io and going forward I will recommend them to my clients ahead of anyone else.
I’ve reached out to Educative.io on behalf of my readers and negotiated a special deal for the readers of this blog. Simply go here and sign up for the free trial and you’ll be applied with a discount whenever you want to upgrade to the full plan.
So, what are you waiting for! Get stuck in, do a skill assessment or just get started on a learning path! Educative.io rules!!
