20 best alternatives to Thinkster as of 2018 - Slant

Code School

Top Pro

Practice the code after each video

After each video, there are a series of challenges that give you a chance to apply what you just learned. The great thing about these challenges are that they force you to think through a problem, and use the new skills to solve it. It's not just regurgitating facts; it requires some effort. See More

Top Con

Requires paying to complete courses

Although the beginning of each course is free and you can see if you are interested in pursuing it, to complete the course you must pay. See More

Top Pro

Paths for learning different skills

While you can jump into any video you like, there is also the option to follow a path for what you are wanting to learn. These give a nice direction if you are wanting to improve on a particular area and guide you into what to do next. They currently offer Ruby, Javascript, HTML/CSS, and iOS. See More

Top Con

Videos are of a tone that some people cannot stand

Top Pro

Fun and engaging teaching style

The instructors often use humour throughout the videos while letting their passion for the topic show. See More

Top Con

A bit too basic

There is not a lot of advanced content. See More

Top Pro

In-depth courses

Code School is not just for beginners to programming, but provides plenty of intermediate and advanced courses for students as their skills grow. See More

Top Pro

Videos show how to build an app in real time

Soup to Bits is a series of videos that shows a developer creating an app from scratch in real time. It's easy to pause a video and follow along with the developer. See More

Top Pro

Video tutorials

Videos give an overview of the course/lesson plan before a single line of code is written. This gives context and a general understanding of what is possible and how teaching will be approached. See More

Specs

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, Objective-C

Features:Editor, video tutorials, progress saver, forum

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49 7

Codecademy

Top Pro

Interactivity

Right from the start, users write code. They start small in an environment that has constant feedback and gradually progress to more complex concepts. Users can see code results instantly, giving great feedback. See More

Top Con

Lack of context

Codecademy is great for providing a hands-on approach, but there is a lack of context regarding how to start a project in real life. While users may learn how to code using Codecademy's interface, they may not have any idea how to code independently. See More

Top Pro

Excellent progression

Codeacademy doesn't overwhelm beginners with information. It gives bite-sized information, the bare minimum needed to finish a task and get to the next one. As the course progresses, it slowly fills in background information. See More

Top Con

Not the best structure for quick refreshers

The content of the lessons is aimed very much at people just starting to learn how to code. This is perfect for beginners but if you want to use Codecademy to refresh your knowledge the lessons are not designed to be quickly done. See More

Top Pro

Good editor

Codeacademy has a powerful, beginner-friendly integrated development environment (IDE) that can also be used outside of curriculum. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Codecademy is known to have many bugs which interfere with the editor, resulting in error messages despite having the correct answer. See More

Top Pro

Bite-sized lessons

Each lesson in code-academy focuses on a single concept, and repetition is provided to drill the concept. See More

Top Con

Deleted a lot of content

A lot of free content has been taken away, for example the PHP course was removed from the site. See More

Top Pro

Community forums

It has forums which can be used to discuss with other learners See More

Top Con

Allows infinite loops to run

If you run an infinite loop, the browser freezes. Many other similar websites will give you an error, preventing the loop from running. Though not a bug, the lack of feature to stop infinite loops from running can be quite frustrating to beginners. See More

Specs

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Python

Features:Code editor, forum, progress saver, written tutorials

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138 28

Hackr.io

Top Pro

Community trust

Instead of getting a recommendation from a single dev, you get recommendation from the entire programming community. See More

Top Pro

Recommendation for every programming language/framework/library

You can find Python as well as Jenkins. See More

Top Pro

Nice filters

Free, Video, Book, Beginner, Advanced, etc. See More

21 0

SoloLearn

Top Pro

Completely free

Top Con

Only the most commonly used languages are covered.

C++, Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, SQL, PHP, Swift, Ruby, JQuery, HTML, CSS. You won't find anything less common like Haskell, Erlang, Elixir, Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Rust, etc. See More

Top Pro

Offline learning mode for mobile apps

Allows learning while disconnected from the net. See More

Top Con

Limited usefulness for intermediate or experienced programmers

No advanced coding challenges. Look for those on other sites like hackerrank. See More

Top Pro

Easy for beginners

Anyone can get started with this. See More

Top Pro

Share and modify others' projects

Top Pro

Browser-based code playgrounds

No software installation needed, just a modern web browser. On mobile devices though the mobile apps are highly recommended. See More

Top Pro

Excellent mobile apps available

Top Pro

Gamification

XP, levels, badges, certificates, etc. See More

Specs

Languages:C++, Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, SQL, PHP, Swift, Ruby, JQuery, HTML, CSS.

Questions throughout the course:Yes

Offline operation:Yes

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10 0

Ng-tutorial

Top Pro

Crowdsourced

Developer, mgechev, invites anyone to contribute with tutorials, and improvements for design and code. For more information see GitHub repository. See More

Top Con

Not actively updated

There hasn't been any updates with new tutorials for the past year. See More

Top Pro

Interactive

Tutorials step you through various Angular lessons via a JSFiddle-like interface. See More

8 0

AngularJS by Example

Top Pro

Anticipates and explains errors

The author anticipates many of the common errors you may encounter while working through the practice examples. He explains why they happen, and how to prevent them. See More

Top Con

"Handling Common Scenarios" chapter could be more in-depth

The chapter explains a few common scenarios and how to deal with them using best practices. However it's a bit light for a fairly important chapter and only touches on things like authentication and authorization. See More

Top Pro

Real world projects

The book incrementally develops more than one real world angular apps with detailed explanation of Angularjs concepts. Companion source code also works just fine with angular v 1.3 See More

5 0

edX

Top Pro

Large selection of science courses

edX offers a wide variety of science-related courses. This makes it a great resource for learning not only specific programming languages, but also other topics relating to computer science. See More

Top Con

Courses aren't always available

While edX does offer some self-paced courses, you may end up waiting for the course of your choice to be run. See More

Top Pro

Offers courses from well known schools

edX offers courses from a wide range of well known colleges and universities including Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Cornell and more. See More

Top Con

Lack of engagement in the forums

edX does not have the same forum participation from both students and instructors that other websites do, and the form of engagement often does not encourage discussion. See More

Top Pro

Offer certificates for some courses

Top Con

The forums are difficult to navigate

The forums are difficult to sort by date and topic, and are unintuitive to navigate. See More

Top Pro

A lot of topics (subjects)

Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. See More

Top Pro

Free

Both edX and the classes are free. See More

Specs

Languages:Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, English, Russian, French

Features:Forum, video tutorials, written tutorials, projects

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34 2

All You Need To Know About AngularJS - Udemy

Top Pro

Clearly explains the theory behind AngularJS

The instructor is quite knowledgeable and clearly explains how Angular works and what it can do. See More

Top Con

No practical examples and visual aids

This course is mainly listening to the instructor give a lecture on the uses of, and theory behind AngularJS. There are very few visual aids and practical examples to help you grasp what is being taught. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

Udemy has a friendly community that aims to help people out both on the site and through social media. See More

4 0

Dash

Top Con

Requires you to sign up for information

The Dash website provides very little information and requires you to sign up with your e-mail if you want to learn more (such as cost). See More

Top Pro

Real-time editor

The result of what you write shows next to your code in real-time. See More

Top Pro

Slideshows

Slideshows explain concepts and show the final result of given task without taking you out of the moment. See More

4 0

Udacity

Top Pro

Courses taught by industry professionals

Top Con

Nanodegrees are expensive

Udacity is quite expensive at $200/month if you want to do a nanodegree. See More

Top Pro

All courses are self-paced

Courses are always made available which means there is no waiting for the specific course you want to run. You can work through the courses as fast or as slow as you want. See More

Top Pro

Offers Nanodegrees

Udacity offers a few different Nanodegrees which provide access to various different courses, project reviews and coaching support for $200/month. Current options include Front End Web Developer, Data Analyst and Android Developer. See the full list here. See More

Top Pro

Courses are easy to understand

Top Pro

Actual feedback on coding projects

You get actual feedback from developers on your code, which is useful. Yes having your sites/apps do what it is supposed to do is important, but you need feedback to learn industry standards/best practices and other gotchas that are much harder to learn on your own. See More

Specs

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, Swift, SQL, R

Features:Editor, progress saver, forum, video tutorials

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70 4

Lynda

Top Pro

Quality and quantity

Top Con

Lacks a community

With no user forum, there is very little opportunity to engage with other students and discuss the learning material. See More

Top Pro

Video tutorials with commentaries

Top Con

iOS and Android apps are somewhat poor

Compared to the experience available on the web, the mobile apps are severely lagging behind. See More

Top Pro

Extensive

There are a lot of different languages to choose from thanks to their large offering of courses (almost 4000 total that cover various subjects). See More

Top Con

More ways to help retain the information would be helpful

More quizzes, tests and assignments to help practice and retain the presented information would be helpful. See More

Top Pro

Build as you learn

Many courses offered on Lynda take a hands-on approach, encouraging you to apply what you learn by building projects. See More

Top Pro

It's possible to get transcripts of videos

Top Pro

Videos can be watched at 2x speed

If you feel yourself getting bored with the lecture, it's possible to speed it up to get through it quicker. See More

Specs

Languages:Java, JavaScript, C++, PHP, Ruby, HTML, CSS,MySQL, Go

Features:Video tutorials, progress saver, tutorials

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44 3

Code Avengers

Top Pro

Reinforces concepts through fun interactions

Code Avengers makes their material engaging and interactive, which aids with understanding and retention of the material. See More

Top Con

A little slow

It may be slow, but that's only because it's thorough. See More

Top Pro

Full of context

Explains what everything is before you must use it, unlike Codecademy, which just kind of tells you to do stuff. To figure out what everything is exactly, you must either look at the glossary or google it. See More

Top Con

Limited selection of courses

Compared to many other paid learning resources, Code avengers currently has a limited number of courses to choose from. See More

Top Pro

Wide selection of courses

Not only do they offer Python, CSS and HTML, and all the works, they offer them in context packages, where you can work on a project that utilizes one or the other. Also, there are different recommended tracks for different purposes - web designer, etc. See More

Specs

Languages:HTML / CSS / JavaScript / Python

Features:Editor / written tutorials / progress saver

13 1

exercism.io

Top Pro

Human review and feedback

Rather than merely test for code correctness, Exercism uses peer review to improve general programming techniques. Users are encouraged to comment on others' solutions, and refine their own based on feedback. See More

Top Con

Custom commandline client

Exercism requires using a CLI utility to fetch and submit exercises. This is inconvenient compared to web-only alternatives, and poses an additional barrier to entry for some users. See More

Top Pro

Practice with production tools

Unlike many code practice websites, Exercism requires the user to develop and test entirely offline, submitting only the finished code. This promotes familiarity with essential tools and workflow, not just the bare language. See More

Specs

Languages:Clojure, CoffeeScript, C++, C#, Crystal, Elixir, Java, Elm, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Common Lisp, Lua, Objective-C, Ocaml, Perl 5, PHP, PL/SQL, PureScript, Python, R, Racket, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Scheme, Swift, TypeScript

Features:Exercises

72 5

Coursera

Top Pro

High quality courses from well known universities

Many courses offered at Coursera are from well known universities (such as Stanford and Princeton) and instructed by their professors. Often the material taught in the Coursera courses is material from the actual university course. See More

Top Con

Courses are not always available

Courses are run on set dates, though some courses provide access to the material whether or not the course is running (however, there will be far less student activity in the forums when the course is not running). Some courses only make their material available when the course is running, so you may have to wait a long period (sometimes months) for your course to be offered. See More

Top Pro

You can audit courses for free

Top Con

You cannot take the full courses for free

While you used to be able to take courses for free and earn a statement of accomplishment, this is no longer the case. You can only audit the courses if you are not paying. Coursera makes it seem like you should also do the quizzes, but the submit button says "Upgrade to submit". See More

Top Pro

Wide selection of courses

Coursera offers over 1000 courses on a variety of different topics. Courses are offered on learning to code and specific languages, but there is also a large selection of courses that would be beneficial to someone wanting to learn more about computer science as well (algorithms, data science, computer security) and plenty others. See More

Top Pro

Courses offered in a variety of languages (with transcriptions available)

Coursera offers courses from all around the world, resulting in courses taught in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Turkish and a long list of others. Transcriptions for a large number of languages are offered for each course. See More

Top Pro

Some courses offer a verified certificate for a fee

There is an option to earn a verified certificate as proof you completed the course (for use on LinkedIn, resumes etc.). The cost varies between courses, but is generally around $49-$60. See More

Specs

Languages:English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean

Features:Video tutorials, tests, forum

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38 4

Platzi

Top Con

Many courses are only offered in Spanish

Platzi originally launched as Mejorando.la, an educational resource offering all courses in Spanish. They have since rebranded and now offer courses in both English and Spanish, however their English courses are currently still limited. See More

Top Pro

Focuses on skill development

Platzi designs their courses in a way that will teach you tangible skills and encourages you to apply them right from the start. See More

Top Pro

High course adherence

By focusing on teaching tangible skills, Platzi has a 70% adherence rate to their courses compared to the 20% of other online courses. See More

Top Pro

Live streaming classes

Top Pro

Courses taught by industry leaders

Platzi has a few courses available taught by well known industry leaders such as Y Combinator President Sam Altman. See More

Specs

Languages:Ruby / JavaScript / PHP

Features:Video tutorials / written tutorials / progress saver / editor / projects

2 0

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