When comparing PluralSight vs freeCodeCamp, 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 PluralSight is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose freeCodeCamp is:
Free for anyone who wants to take the camp.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Offers advanced content
PluralSight offers programming courses for intermediate and advanced students, providing more depth than many of it's competitors.
Pro Offers learning paths
PluralSite offers learning paths, which help you figure out which courses to take and in what order.
Pro Mobile apps available
Available iPhone and Android apps.
Pro Consistent quality
The course quality is high because Pluralsight has a full-time editing staff that carefully reviews every video produced. They enforce audio, video and content standards that help ensure a consistent and high quality result.
Pro You can check your skill in learned language
You get rating for each tested language. This rating is compared to the other users of pluralsight.
Pro Huge breadth of content (over 4000 courses)
Courses on software development, design, 3D modeling, and much more.
Pro Notes in courses
You can add notes to each course, which makes it easier to repeat what you learned in past.
Pro New material added frequently
PluralSight is constantly adding new courses to reflect the evolving industry. Currently they offer over 4000 courses.
Pro Assessments and certificates of achievement
Plural site offers both pre-course and post-course assessments. Passing post-assessments will allow you to view and print off a certificate of achievement.
Pro Public profile statistics page
You can share your learning progress and interests. Useful to attach to a links section in resume.
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
Cons
Con Some courses are outdated
Some of the courses are years old, so they are fairly outdated.
Con No coding exercices
There is no space where you can test your learned skills.
Con Paid
Not Free
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.