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Add to SafariWhen comparing freeCodeCamp vs Coursera, the Slant community recommends freeCodeCamp for most people. In the question“What are the best websites to learn to code?” freeCodeCamp is ranked 1st while Coursera is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose freeCodeCamp is:
Free for anyone who wants to take the camp.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Completely free
Free for anyone who wants to take the camp.
Pro Open source
Due to freeCodeCamp being open source, you are able to contribute to the program that helped teach you how to code in the first place. It's a great way to give back and gain experience.
Pro Self-paced
There is no set schedule with freeCodeCamp. You can work through the program as fast or as slow as you want.
Pro Browser-based
All courses used by freeCodeCamp are done in the browser, rather than students having to set up their own environment. This makes it much easier for beginners to get started.
Pro Actively developed
They are frequently updating courses and adding new material.
Pro Welcoming, active community
freeCodeCamp strongly encourages interacting with other learners and experienced programmers. They provide chatrooms which are always active and full of members happy to answer any questions you may have. Pair programming (programming with another user) is encouraged as a great way to work through some of their coding challenges.
There are also meetup groups where you can code in person with other freeCodeCamp students.
Pro Six certificates available
There are currently six certificates available that you can get once you've completed all the projects:
- Responsive Web Design Certification
- Javascript Algorithms And Data Structures Certification
- Front End Libraries Certification
- Data Visualization Certification
- Apis And Microservices Certification
- Information Security And Quality Assurance Certification
Pro Gain real world experience while helping nonprofits
Once you've completed all the courses and practice levels on freeCodeCamp, you are able to participate with other learners on developing software for non-profits. It's an amazing way to gain experience and build your portfolio as a developer, while helping out a non-profit organization.
Pro Full stack certificate
There is a cool Full stack certificate
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.
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.
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.
Pro You can audit courses for free
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.
Cons
Con No longer offers opportunity to build projects one-on-one with nonprofits
There are no nonprofits to help upon completing the program.
Con Learning material is not in-depth
The teaching content provided by freeCodeCamp tends to act more as an introduction than a solid learning resource. Unless you already have some prior experience, you won't have enough knowledge to get through the coding challenges and development projects without using outside learning resources to fill in the gaps.
Con Massive time waste
Content mainly focuses on trivial concepts and is very sparse in those few areas that inch beyond 'complete beginner'.
Con Is an email list generator
Early focus isn't on programming. It is on signing up for all of FreeCodeCamp's social media and getting looped into their newsletters. The content is trivial. It is all just a massive marketing scheme to get email addresses of aspiring programmers to affiliate sell to by pushing novice developers to blog posts containing affiliate links.
That is until they sell to a 3rd party. Read their disclaimer. Whoever buys them out gets all their user data, email lists, etc.
Con No offline version
Con Excessive focus on the basics
This platform focuses too much on the basics.
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.
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".
