Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Great instructors
The course formats are flexible enough that instructors are able to employ their own styles so long as exercises are offered in consistent intervals and student progress is measurable. The instructors communicate very clearly and are very approachable.
Pro Best beginner's option
Materials are very well made and it'll get you started with the technology as fast as possible. Haven't found tutorials that well made and understandable.
Nothing is skipped or assumed without reference to courses within that were recommended to you earlier. This makes the site an efficient review resource if you ever forget a basic concept.
Pro Learning tracks
Trying to figure out what language or tool to learn can be frustrating. TreeHouse groups their courses into learning tracks so you have more guidance, based on what type of development you want to do. Some of the tracks they offer: Web Design, Front-end Development, Full-Stack Javascript, and PHP Development (see the list here).
Pro Workspaces
You don't have to install anything to your computer and can learn from anywhere using their Workspaces.
The effectiveness of this tool cannot be overstated. Even though instructors often preface courses with installation guides to setup popular environments the Workspaces allow you to jump right in, mimic the examples, work on your project, experiment with tangent thoughts, or even complete parallel courses simultaneously, within separate Workspace instances. Execution is very fast and space is ample.
Pro Forum
If you're stuck with an task you can easily get help on their forum.
Most topics are visited by hundreds of students per day and responses are often returned within minutes if not seconds. In case your question cannot be answered by the imminent community, they can be pushed to recommended members or staff experts for prompt responses.
Pro Motivates Students
The community is very supportive and the company convincingly more interested in your positive referral than in your subscription, though both is obviously preferred. Besides recognition and gamification, your timely progress is actively encouraged. There are even employer monitored sections with suggestions of how to meet career goals with related skills.
Cons
Con The quality is inconsistent among courses
Treehouse has multiple teachers in order to provide such a variety of content. However there is a lack of consistency with teaching styles - Some courses provide content that is well explained and goes at a reasonable pace. Other courses can be quite hard to follow. The challenges are also inconsistent - Some are too easy and don't reinforce much of the material learned.
Con Charges your credit card before the free trial expires
The Treehouse offers a free trial period, which is nice on the one hand. On the other hand you still need to register a payment method to be able to use it. And what's even worse, if you cancel the paid subscription before the FREE trial ends, you loose any access to free trial! So you will then have to pay a subscription fee to renew the access to the free course even though you SHOULD have some trial period left. That is absolutely unacceptable these days and smells as quite a shady business practice.
Con Has become very buggy/unreliable
The number of bugs has gradually been increasing to the point where the platform may be more frustrating than beneficial for some users (as of October 2016).
The engineers seem to be doing their best to stay on top of things, but bugs appear to be occurring faster than they can fix them.
Some bugs require you to refresh the page (often multiple times) before getting the information correctly displayed. UI elements jump around, some features on the site are broken.
Con The forum lacks conversation/engagement
TreeHouse provides a a forum for students to have discussions. However almost all posts are students looking for answers to the quizzes and challenges. Any attempts at general discussions about business, learning, programming, job seeking etc. tend to go without replies.