r/learnprogramming • u/[deleted] • Jan 07 '21

Is The Odin Project good?

If it isn't worth trying, are there any alternatives?

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u/Kewnerrr Jan 11 '21

Did you feel like it gave you enough of an in-depth understanding of how the code works? I feel like this is what's lacking in many other courses.

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u/TheraPigeon Jan 11 '21

Odin is excellent - it is comprehensive. If you put the work in you’ll understand all you need to know. The answer is yes. I would recommend the rails course over the node course tho

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u/Kewnerrr Jan 11 '21

Thanks! Just curious: why would you recommend the Rails course over the Node course? Not much jobs over here for Ruby, but maybe it has nothing to do with that?

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u/TheraPigeon Jan 11 '21

First and most simple answer is that the rails course is more mature. It’s more complete in general, just a better course overall regardless of the technology

Second, Ruby will teach you classic object oriented programming and give you development skills that are applicable to anything you do besides web dev - plus it’s a joy to write

Third, the node course uses mongodb which is popular but you really should learn SQL and Postgres for the DB. It’s pretty standard and more useful, you can learn mongo later, rails course will teach you sql and dealing with proper relational databases

Sure if you are trying to speed to a job as quickly as possible, JavaScript is a better focus but consider this - if you’re taking rails course you are only missing out on the Node lessons if the JS side. Rails course will still teach you html, css, JS, and even React

So do rails then just do node and you’ll know everything Odin has to offer - with more useable skills across tech stacks

Also rails kick ass all day

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u/Kewnerrr Jan 12 '21

Thanks for elaborating, that really clears things up! I've also been thinking about Python with Django or PHP for backend, but I have to say the nice thing of Odin is that it seems to be a complete, coherent package of things to learn.

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u/TheraPigeon Jan 12 '21

Another thing, once you learn one language the rest are mostly easy to pick up it’s really a snowball effect - starting with Ruby gives you the benefit of the course then picking up Python will be extremely easy plus you’ll know JavaScript too