Is Scrimba the Best Online Code Learning Platform? An Honest Review
7 MINUTE READ
In this article:
🧑🏾💻 User Experience & Interface: A Smooth Ride or a Bumpy Road?
🧠 Course Quality & Content: Does It Actually Teach You to Code?
💷 Pricing & Value: Is It Worth Your Investment?
Having lumbered through three very different online tech bootcamps of varying standards over the past two years, I was ready to have my evenings back, my pyjamas on 🛌, and my multiple slack channels silenced. Bliss. Did I feel job ready yet? Erm, not really, so the search continued.
Feeling reluctant to scroll through another Udemy video course (hour 27.5, topic - em units), the Scrimba algorithm worked its magic when I was most vulnerable, on a bleak Black Friday November day and offered me 1/3rd off its annual subscription. And here we are three months in, I’m making six figures. 💰 Just kidding, but here are my honest thoughts on the Frontend Developer Path and the React.js course from someone who has seen and tried it all.
🧑🏾💻 User Experience & Interface: A Smooth Ride or a Bumpy Road?
You heard it here first, Scrimba has one of the most interactive, intuitive and engaging UI’s out there. I used think that as long as concepts were well explained, I could pause a video, split my screen and bash away at my keyboard for 40+ hours, no problem. However, Scrimba has upped my expectations. Its interface is unique in that you can edit the code during the screencast (recorded video). This creates a ‘branch’ in which you can work on challenges there and then. No more cloning and making multiple directories in the wrong place. We are onto something.
Another huge plus is the challenges are frequent, manageable, engaging and follow a spiral curriculum, in which you encounter concepts again and again. They also don’t spoon feed you, but support you enough with scaffolding, and then slowly take it away so foster independence. You can tell I get excited when my teacher jargon is coming through, but it really works. The new AI feature rolled out last week also means you get targeted tips if you haven’t managed to complete the challenge. Another excellent feature.
🧠 Course Quality & Content: Does It Actually Teach You to Code?
See above. Previously, I had struggled with Flexbox because the video courses either covered too many other concepts in order to create a whole presentable website in the course, or only went over concepts once or twice and expected you to simply go back in your own time and find the videos again. Scrimba’s curriculum regurgitates (not pleasant) Flexbox concepts, but also lays the foundations so you are not overwhelmed. The ‘open’ projects also mean that now you get to also practice without any help. This is truly what learning a coding concept means.
💷 Pricing & Value: Is It Worth Your Investment?
I was very reluctant to part with £126 for Scrimba Pro, but I would absolutely do it again, it’s more than proven its value. You get the enthusiastic instructors, real-life, motivating manageable projects, smooth UI, engaging hands-on learning and a Discord community which genuinely helps you along the way. Too much information in one sentence? Agreed. to sum, Scrimba Pro is very much worth it. Now about those six figures…
