What Is The Odin Project and What Makes It Awesome?

Table of Contents

• Disclaimer
• Introduction
• What Is The Odin Project?
• A High Quality, Holistic Curriculum
  • A Self-Paced Curriculum Demands Personal Responsibility and Honesty
• A Vibrant and Supportive Community
• Conclusion

Disclaimer

This is not an official publication from The Odin Project. I, the author, am a student of and occasional contributor to The Odin Project, not a leader, maintainer or team member of the organization. Any descriptions or opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own and are not necessarily endorsed by The Odin Project. Additionally, I should mention that I have not yet completed the entire curriculum, having at the time of writing finished the Ruby course of the Full Stack Ruby on Rails pathway.

Introduction

I'm a student who's been learning with and involved in The Odin Project (TOP) for a while now and I've decided to write this post comprehensively detailing what TOP is, how it works and what makes it awesome. The intended audience for this article is outsiders or newcomers to TOP who are curious to learn about the project.

There already exist prominent and authoritative resources for those looking to learn about TOP such as the website, GitHub organization, Discord community and blog, and I definitely recommend you review them if you haven't already. My goal with this article isn't necessarily to regurgitate what's already well-documented there, but instead to share some of the insider knowledge I've gained through my time spent with TOP and hopefully clear up some points that I believe can often induce confusion and skepticism in outsiders or newcomers.

In this article I'll discuss from my perspective the intricacies of TOP's curriculum and community, as well as its community-driven development model and unique teaching strategies. I'll also mix in my personal experience with TOP where relevant, and admittedly, I wont miss the opportunity to express what I most appreciate about the project. OK, let's get into it!

What Is The Odin Project?

Let me begin by briefly describing TOP. TOP is a free and open online curriculum centered around full stack web development. It's led and maintained by unpaid volunteers, its expenses are transparently funded through donations and it welcomes anybody to use and contribute to it.

Learners are strongly encouraged to take the curriculum in order, as structured and to not skip anything. Learners begin with the Foundations pathway, after which they will choose a path to continue between Full Stack Ruby on Rails or Full Stack Javascript. The two full stack pathways are pedagogically similar, essentially differing only in their tech stack. Throughout the curriculum learners will develop many portfolio-worthy projects which they can present on their résumé.

TOP's curriculum consists of a logically organized combination of in-house-produced content such as lessons, projects and exercises, alongside external resources elsewhere on the web such as blogs, courses, documentation and e-books. It emphasizes research-and-project-based learning with a focus on teaching fundamental developer skills such as problem-solving, effective communication and experimentation.

A High-Quality, Holistic Curriculum

I have no intention to disparage any other projects or communities, but for the sake of comparison and to demonstrate TOP's holistic approach to education, I'll say: some other web dev curriculums almost immediately delve the learner into playing with HTML elements in a web-based editor without much context or setup, but TOP is different.

TOP instead begins with a thorough introduction designed to prepare the learner for the road ahead and equip them for long-term success. This introduction provides an overview of what to expect from the curriculum and the web dev landscape, has an entire lesson dedicated to motivation and mindset and encourages the learner to join and participate in the Odin community.

From there the learner continues with the prerequisites section. This section is mostly focused on guiding the learner through installing and configuring a realistic development environment on their machine which they will use for the rest of the curriculum. It runs through installing a Unix-like OS, installing Git and setting up a GitHub account, becoming comfortable with the command line and installing an IDE.

Some newcomers are put off by the prerequisites section. I know I found the idea of installing all of these tools intimidating when I began with TOP. I won't attempt to argue for it because the curriculum is the authoritative source on this and explains itself well. Needless to say, I believe the fact that TOP has learners install a realistic environment so early is brilliant and crucial so that they can learn and practice with the tools that devs actually use on a daily basis.

These two initial sections, the introduction and prerequisites, clearly illustrate something that sets TOP apart: it isn't simply concerned with teaching you specific technologies or how to compose code, it aims to teach you the fundamental skills and mindset required to effectively develop software, regardless of the tech stack you learn with. After all, a developer with strong fundamentals and the right mindset is capable of transferring their skills from one technology to another. I can confidently say that the most value I've personally derived from TOP so far isn't to do with any specific programming skills or tech (though TOP is stellar at teaching those as well), but the general, fundamental skills of research, reading, communication, problem-solving, experimentation, self-discipline, grit and so on.

A Self-Paced Curriculum Demands Personal Responsibility and Honesty

TOP's curriculum is self-paced and voluntary: there aren't any mandated deadlines or dedicated staff to review and grade students' work. TOP provides the high-quality curriculum and supportive community, but the onus is ultimately on the learner to manage their own progress and decide whether they've satisfied the necessary requirements and criteria. I find that outsiders are sometimes skeptical of this model and seem to want to compare it to paid coding boot camps or a university computer science education, which do often possess dedicated teaching staff and mandate deadlines on students.

Different educational models will work better for different people. Personally, I enjoy that TOP is self-paced and self-regulated. When it comes to evaluating and assessing assignment and project requirements independently: for one, this is an important skill to develop in and of itself, and secondly, the learner is always welcome to ask for help or feedback in the Odin community if they're confused. As for deadlines, I believe they can do more detriment than good to learning, so I'm glad to manage my own time through TOP.

Ultimately, TOP's curriculum demands personal responsibility and honesty from the learner. The only person a learner hurts by rushing through the curriculum or taking liberties with project requirements is themselves. The learner needs to ask themselves what their goal is: to complete TOP, or to learn how to be a software developer? At the end of the day, what one gets out of any curriculum is dependent on what they put into it.

A Vibrant and Supportive Community

Primarily hosted on Discord, TOP's community is absolutely one of its standout features. The Odin community is unlike many other places on the Internet. It expects and encourages professionalism, accountability, respect, inclusion, and high-effort interactions as documented in the community guides. The leaders of TOP have done a splendid job in producing these guiding documents and fostering the Odin community, and the moderators do great work enforcing the rules and guidelines. From this you may be intimidated or get the impression that TOP moderators rule with an iron fist or something. In reality, well-meaning people are treated with patience and kindness, with the usual response to a misunderstanding being guidance or a polite reminder of the rules and expectations.

Members of the Odin community, Odinites as they're called, are overwhelmingly friendly, supportive and eager to help answer detailed questions and troubleshoot problems. Odinites can be found from all over the world and with all kinds of backgrounds, from people on day one of learning to program, to wise senior professionals and everybody in between. Personally, I don't believe I would have made it this far through the curriculum without the support of other Odinites. From the support I received while installing my dev environment, to all of the encouragement and advice I received while struggling with my chess project, I'm extremely grateful for the generosity and graciousness of the Odin community.

It's exactly this great community that drives the development and maintenance of TOP, keeping it alive, up-to-date and well. I remember being baffled and skeptical when starting with TOP that something of such quality could be maintained by unpaid volunteers and funded by donations, but now after gaining experience with the curriculum and spending time in the community, I understand much better how this community-driven development model can work:

• The community attracts good people.

• Many of the maintainers, leaders and team members rose to their position after using the curriculum, contributing to the project and participating in the community for some time, earning their position through merit. Many may owe their own education and even career to TOP, feeling a desire to pay it forward.

• Being able to say "I'm a maintainer or team member at The Odin Project" looks fabulous on a résumé.

• Because TOP is run by unpaid volunteers, and the curriculum is largely composed of external resources and requires personal responsibility from the learner, the project's expenses are relatively low and can be funded by donations.

• Odinites appreciate the curriculum and community, and many are more than willing to pay forward the support they receive by contributing, helping others and donating.

Besides being vibrant and supportive, the Odin community and open nature of TOP provide the perfect environment for the learner to practice some of the most essential developer skills: communication and collaboration. This can be done by preparing detailed questions, guiding and answering other Odinites or contributing to one of the GitHub repositories.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this has been a brief article and I believe there's more nuance that can only be discovered by experiencing TOP's curriculum and spending time around the Odin community for yourself, but I hope this article has proven helpful to anybody looking to learn more about how TOP works and why it truly is such a wonderful project. If you're a prospective student considering starting TOP, I hope you now feel better equipped to decide if it's right for you. Thanks for reading!