Independent Timeline

FreeCodeCamp is an open source project, a lot of the work is done by volunteers, the staff doesn’t even have a salary from this (staff that is made of about 3 people) - one of the goals of the users contributing is to finally give them a salary from this.

So, yes, if you are capable you could certainly create a pull request to FreeCodeCamp github repository with your change
Or you can create an issue there so that someone else, if interested in working on it, can do that change

An other reason for which the timeline could totally not respect how much one worked: a person with scarce access to the Internet could create a local copy of FreeCodeCamp and work there, going online once in a while to share the completed projects

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I absolutely would hire that kid, that’s exactly who I’m looking for. In fact someday this business needs to belong to someone. I’ll be 50 in two years. Maybe i’ll work till 75 who knows. But one thing is certain, I’m going to retire or die someday lol… And if My son does not assume ownership then “poof” 25 years of work and personal legacy gone in the blink of an eye.

So yea always remember there all sorts of situations out there. From large corporations looking for a coding genius, to smaller operations looking for a successor or apprentice, and everything in between. :slight_smile:

Many thanks for that, I had no idea honestly… 3 people huh. Very admirable… I hope the community comes together and manages to get these fine folks paid… Dare I say they should consider charging a minimal fee for their more advanced programs.

But many thanks again for that information. this explains a lot.

I do agree that making the timelines optional would be a awesome feature to implement. I myself have some pretty large gaps in my timeline :laughing:

But as mentioned before, life happens, FCC got away from me as I was focusing/dealing with other stuff.
As of right now I’m freelancing (sporadically hahah), so if an employer did ask about those gaps I can at least say I was doing client work to fill in some of the space. However that’s not the case for a lot of campers here, so having the option to hide their timeline could be very helpful to them in the long run.

I’m trying to figure you out AntRocka. You claim to be someone “in a hiring position” (which I take to mean that you are doing the hiring) but you don’t sound like any hirer I’ve encountered. You seem obsessed with the timeline and certificates. In my job search, I applied for hundreds of jobs, had dozens of phone interviews, a few in person interviews, and about half a dozen “down to the last few” interviews. Living around Silicon Valley, I also spoke to dozens of other hirers and founders and at meetups spoke with many other devs looking for work. Not once, I repeat “not once” has any hirer shown the least interest in my FCC timeline (I had one comment on my Stack Overflow timeline but didn’t seem to care too much about it) and no one has shown the slightest interest in any certificates.

Too me, the FCC timeline is there to “gameify” the learning experience. I can’t imagine why any competent hirer would show the slightest interest in the FCC timeline. FCC is not a comprehensive program so a lot of the learning takes place outside of FCC or while working on larger projects. The timeline just makes it fun for learners. I don’t know if I’d even want to work for someone that was basing their hiring on that - it would show a level of ignorance that would make me worry.

As to certificates - they are just a fun way for the camper to keep track. No one (unless they are an idiot) is going to hire you because of your FCC certificates. Sure, I say, put them on your resume, but that is not going to land you a job. At best, it is going to get you 5 more seconds of their attention and get some more keywords on your resume.

This is a rudimentary beginners course. No new students are going to come away from this particular course with any of the things you’ve listed here [… a website for a local business with e-commerce …a wordpress site for a blogger … a React SPA that lets people access synopses of all the Star Trek shows based on which characters are in them … contribute to open-source projects?]. And they will have no experience with git hub either…

I find that perhaps the most stunning paragraph you’ve written. “Rudimentary”? By the end of the program I was doing much of this stuff. Specifically:

  • … a website for a local business with e-commerce … - No, I didn’t do that. It wasn’t local. It was an international site for a Chinese e-commerce company working with an international team of devs. This is the most difficult thing on his list. Yes, I did it. I couldn’t have done it without FCC. 95% of what I did on that job was stuff I learned at FCC. Period.

  • … a wordpress site for a blogger … - Nope, didn’t do a WP site. I despise WP and it’s “paint by numbers” approach. I am, though, currently working on a blog app based on the MERN stack that I learned at FCC. Building one from scratch is much more difficult. Really, you think building a WP blogger site is difficult? Someone without any coding knowledge can do this. If I took a 16 year old with no coding knowledge and showed them a few youtube videos, they could figure this out. Are you sure you work in the coding world?

  • … a React SPA that lets people access synopses of all the Star Trek shows based on which characters are in them … - This would be quite easy with the skills learned at FCC. Really, this would be easy. It troubles me, AntRocka, that you think that these are advanced things.

  • … contribute to open-source projects … - Check. Did that too.

I’m not sure where your opinion about what FCC is teaching is coming from. Yes, the beginning lessons are at a beginner level. But FCC easily get’s into an intermediate level. And many of us (including me) have used that as a springboard into learning more advanced things. I eventually landed a great job out if it. True, FCC didn’t coddle me into a new job (I had to work hard for it) but FCC never claimed to do that. FCC gets you on the path and gives you some strong tools. This is not an immersive bootcamp where you spend three months doing coding for 12 hours a day and then at the end you get a hookup for a job. This is a free, work at your own pace, learn at your own pace, “here’s some basic to intermediate level skills to get you started”.

And they will have no experience with git hub either…

Actually, github is encouraged in the course and forum. Since later projects require you to make your code accessible online and that (nowadays) means some kind of git, I would almost call it all but mandatory once you get to the backend section.


I’m trying to figure you out AntRocka. Having been doing the forum for almost two years now and having been a moderator for most of that, I’ve noticed a strange category of people that sometimes show up. They appear on the forum all of a sudden and start telling people what is wrong with FCC. They’re knowledge is often spotty, and they seem to talk a big game but their words don’t seem to back up the knowledge/position they claim.

I notice that you have been on the forum for three days. You have spent a few hours reading, looking at eight topics. Two of those are the ones that you’ve created to profess what you think FCC should do differently. Those are the only topics to which you’ve replied. I haven’t seen anything in any of your posts that would allow me to gauge your background or knowledge on the subject.

So, AntRocka, you sure have some very strong opinions. May I ask what your background is? Mine is easy to find - besides having spent years here helping campers as a (I’d like to think) respected contributor, I have many posts talking about my background and career and links to my linkedin, portfolio, resume, and github account. So far, all I know about you is that you really, really think timelines and certificates are important, don’t seem to know much about the FCC, curriculum, and the most technical thing I’ve heard you say is that you know the word “github”.

A weird thing about the internet is that some people get very confident about very little knowledge, the Dunning-Kruger Effect on steroids. It’s so easy to create an account and start spewing nonsense. Some people are even so childish that they seem to get off on it. If you were to confront them in real life, they’d just explain it away as “telling it like it is” or “lying to make a point”. I hope that is not you. I hope (with all the in depth knowledge you seem to think that you have) that you find a way to contribute to the campers here in ways other than complaining. There are a lot of people here that need technical help with learning complex things. Surely, if you feel that FCC is just “a rudimentary beginners course”. There are a lot of more advanced questions that don’t get enough answers, like things with Express, Passport, Mongoose, D3, etc. Surely your vast knowledge of these subjects would be of great help.

So, with all due respect, may I ask who you are and what your experience is that have led you to these conclusions? What is your education experience? Work experience in the dev world? How far into FCC have you gotten?

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Just to be clear (I think I left this emphasis out of the last post) - the absolute, top things that anyone cared about in any interview I had: They wanted to know what technologies I’d worked with and they want to see what I’d built - the app and the code. A close third would be see how I’d solve problems by having my build things or solve algorithms. No one cared about any certificates or timelines. Period. I’m not knocking them - they are a great way for the learner to mark milestones. But anyone that tells you they are important to getting hired - well, I would have to question their knowledge and experience. You could build an argument that some credentials are worth something if they come from a recognized and respected organization with high standards (like the Oracle Java certifications) but no one who knows what’s going on is going to look at a digital certificate from an online, free, self-paced, self-graded “bootcamp” and decide to hire them based on that.

There are some places that insist on degrees. There are some places that insist on “real” bootcamps. There are a lot of places that don’t care. But the one thing that binds them all is that the most important thing is what you know and what you’ve built. Your knowledge and your portfolio - that’s 97% of it, at least the technical part. (I think that the soft skills part of getting hired needs more thought.)

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You wound me Kevin :laughing:

Seriously though, I agree that any employer that would base their hiring of you solely on the FCC timeline or any school timeline is someone I wouldn’t want to work with.

I think too the certificates are really just an indication that: “hey this person has the motivation and discipline to complete a thing. Those are much needed skills to have.” And it stops there. The main meat and potatoes is their body of work, any skill tests you put them through, and just talking with them.

But if someone is really that self-conscious about their timeline, I don’t see the harm in implementing an option to privatize it. Basically I’m suggesting it as a possible benefit to the camper rather than to any potential employer. Granted, only if it’s an easy thing to build into the system. Otherwise I’d leave it as is.

You wound me Kevin :laughing:

Yikes! Maybe “despise” is too strong of a word. I looked at WP and saw that a lot of it was click and drag and a lot of the basic work was pretty simple and that market was flooded with low wage overseas people and while there was some deeper work to be had, that seems like a smaller market and I expect that might diminish (or at least get saturated with cheap devs) as more things get automated. That’s my perception. But I don’t fault anyone that’s paying the bills with WP - more power to ya.

I think too the certificates are really just an indication that: “hey this person has the motivation and discipline to complete a thing. Those are much needed skills to have.” …

I’m not sure how much weight an FCC cert has. It’s basically on the honor system.

But if someone is really that self-conscious about their timeline, I don’t see the harm in implementing an option to privatize it.

OK, let’s say someone is interviewing with that 0.1% of companies that actually looks at the FCC timeline. They think it’s important for some reason (I can’t imagine why.) Now they see that the dev is hiding it. How does that help the dev?

Timelines mean nothing. Services like github try to convince you that they are important. Because if they gameify the interface, it makes you want to come back. And you think it is an important part of getting hired. Of the half dozen “final few” interview I was in, only one had the slightest interest in my github timeline. He asked about a month and a half gap. I explained that I was working on freelance job on a private repo on bitbucket. He shrugged his shoulders and moved on. In those last interviews there where probably 20 interviewers total, only one had even a passing interest, and that was the github timeline, not FCC.

I think it runs the danger of sending the wrong message, that that is somehow important. Personally, if it was up to me, I’d get rid of the timelines. They just don’t matter, not in the way people think.

As a mod we sometimes get people sending us a message, “please delete my post, it was a stupid question and I don’t want future employers to see my stupid question”. Who cares? No one is scouring the FCC forum checking out what questions people are asking. The other problem is that there is nothing wrong with asking “stupid” questions - that’s how people learn.

I think it’s better to point them in the right direction to the things that really matter and not let them obsess over the things that don’t matter.

And now I’m confused. Was the OP claiming they hire people or that they’re looking to get hired?

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Hahaha no it’s okay, really! There’s a lot of stigma around WP. I think one major part is the ease of use being its biggest ally and enemy. Can you do some pretty complex things with it? Sure. Can you whip up a blog with a pre-made template in about 5 minutes? Definitely. So it’s a mixed bag. And honestly it’s over-saturated already.

I hear ya. I mean that’s also assuming this employer even knows FCC has a timeline. I think this fictional scenario is getting more and more implausible as we analyze it.

Yeah I can’t say how much weight a FCC cert has either. Not to downplay FCC. And it really does depend on who’s doing the hiring as to what they’ll focus on. But in my head, a strong portfolio is way more important than the certs and diplomas you can show.

I think it’s this online/social media mindset we’re in now. Where you get paranoid that everything you put out there could come back and bite you in ass. Though honestly I think acting like a jerk would get you more in trouble than asking a “stupid” question.

Hire I believe, based off their responses like this:

I just find it odd that someone that claims to do the hiring - seemingly doesn’t know much about the typical hiring process, hasn’t displayed any technical knowledge, and only created an account a few days ago just to create two threads to tell FCC what he things should be changed. That falls into the “suspicious” category to me. It seems that he/she has at least spent some time on the site because he/she knows at least the basics of the site, but hasn’t displayed any knowledge about the curriculum - quite the opposite. As to his/her job/qualifications, people on the internet often claim backgrounds that they don’t have in order to make their words seem more important. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m wrong and AntRocka has a stellar portfolio and a knockout linkedin page. If that’s true, then I owe him/her an apology. But I’m not going to hold my breath.

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Wow, I left this thread and you guys just kept on going, and Kevin jumped on in swinging…

vipertron is offering nothing but insult based on his own assumptions as he fancies himself some sorta psychic that can extract a persons work history from a brief forum suggestion.

And Kevin no offence but if you think I’m reading all you’ve posted I do apologize but no, that’s not gonna be happening. Your suggestion that I’m obsessed with something such as the timeline is rather dramatic and overstated so I can only assume the rest of what you’ve had to offer would be more of the same.

I opened, own, and run Blade Multimedia and have done so for over 20 years. Somehow you folks are just going to have to find a way of coming to terms with that… I would suggest that is a grave waste of your time though. Your not learning anything if your here in this thread coming up with all these bizarre stories and or assumptions about who I am and what I do. And why would you even care who I am, what I do, and/or how long I’ve been in business? Its completely irrelevant to my initial post and your own lives… Focus people… good god. get back on task… Are we really so easily distracted from the topics?

What was a rather bizarre exchange has seeming only grown more bizarre and more toxic in my absence. I certainly wouldn’t recommend these forums to anyone. Sadly I’d have to say "Stay outta the forums. A rather egotistical, suspicious and toxic bunch await to great your very first post…

Good riddance and good luck to all of you… You might notice that I don’t seem to obsess over, or care much who you are, what you do, or how long you been doing it, and that I have felt no need to issue any form of direct insult… You should try that. Its a much healthier way to live and tends to produce better results when interacting with complete strangers. It’s a grown up thing…

You might also recognize if you haven’t by now that I obviously feel no obligation what so ever to provide you with such information… What arrogance you guys display in even expecting such, or in feeling that you should be privy to such…

Holy crap… lol

This is the internet, you can say whatever you want. I saw a lot of talking, and nothing I would identify as saying “that’s a knowledgeable dev!” and a few things that made me wonder, “would an experienced dev say that?” But whatever. I judge a tree by the fruit that it bears. But who cares what I think.

Complaining about a feature on the curriculum site that 99.99% of employers will never bother to look at isn’t really what this forum is about. I’m sorry that your hiring process depends so highly on the FCC timeline. I mentioned this to a few hirers I know - they laughed out loud. But OK man, whatever works for you. I would just suggest that FCC should be more Pareto-ish in where it spends its time. But this is open-source so if you have 20 years experience, it should be no big deal for you to go to the repo, make an issue, defend the idea, make some code changes, and make a pull request. That’s really where this would be decided, not here in the learners forum. I look forward to seeing your contribution to the code base.

And if you have a lot of expertise, we could sure use it in the forum. That would be very helpful. If you have been a working web dev for 20 years, you must have a tremendous amount of knowledge that you can share. Please take a look around the forum and help answer some questions - that’s what we’re all about.

What on earth makes you think I’ve come here to illustrate to you that I’m a knowledgeable developer? This is the arrogance I’m speaking of Kevin. I had and have no such intentions. And for you to somehow feel that I should be obligated as such is just again bizarre… And you keep oddly suggesting how important the timeline is to me or my own hiring methods, regardless of how I’ve stated that that is a bit of an overstatement and rather dramatic. That’s something you’ve come up with all on your own…

And as far as this forum I appreciate your invitation to participate in such toxic exchanges but you don’t seem to be getting the idea that I’m not interested in such… So far this forum based on just one simple suggestion from a new user is batting a big fat zero… And your still swinging away…

For me to even entertain such a silly insecurity, is completely off topic from the initial post. And entirely irrelevant to the suggestion made.

One thing is clear, is that you really do not like the idea that I’ve been in business for 20 years but don’t feel inclined to somehow prove that to you…

I’ll say again that’s weird, and I’m sorry it bothers you that much…

I’ll say again your gonna just hafta somehow find a way of coming to terms with that…

And of course you can feel free to mention it to anyone you like and have all the chuckles you feel you need. Again that is completely and entirely none of my business. Really…

And if I’m to be honest I have to at the very least say that I have no intentions of adding to freecodecamps codebase…

*sigh

Maybe with your own development skills you can simply google if you need to know my background… It’s all right there. But to think I should somehow be supplying with such?

I don’t see you getting a grasp on this Kevin so probably best to drop it. Or if your a mod just look at my account. Have a glance at my email address. Have a look at the tasks completed. This should all be child’s play for you…

Again good luck with whatever it is you do…

Hurry please, I’m trying to finish a screen capture here Kevin…

OK, let us know when you want to contribute something besides your contrarian opinions and persecution complex. I come to this site several times a day because I devote time to help this non-profit, the one that helped me become a fulltime mobile developer with a large innovative company, I want to help the learners that come to this learner’s forum. I also contribute to the code base and sometimes participate in the discussions there, on the repo. I’m not sure why someone would come to the learners’ forum to complain about the curriculum repo. Why exactly do you keep coming here?

Interesting response. to a lot of questions I never asked.

Goodbye Kevin.

Your first post had a “Fix it because I say so” vibe
And it felt much like someone telling me that if I wanted a good grade for my Maths exam I needed to show an interrupted streak of months on Khan Academy

If you think that FreeCodeCamp is not for you, have a good life

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