I'm just about to start. I have some very basic HTML and CSS knowledge from building my own hobby websites in the past, but that's it, no actual programming knowledge.

I'm 38, work a full time job that takes up most of my time, and energy - And I also have three kids (one of them a baby). I can devote upto 2 hours to the course most days if I do nothing else in my free time, and a few more hours on my days off. Other days, I'll have very little time at all.

From reading experience from people who have completed the course, they seem to have spent many hours a day over the period of weeks to months, almost like a bootcamp style.

Obviously, people learn at different paces, but I'm just trying to get a rough sense of how long it could potentially take, and if someone in a similar situation has finished, and had success with the course? Thanks

Since this question has been asked a lot, just for fun, I thought I'd ask our favourite bot, ChatGPT-3.5. Note: ChatGPT3.5 uses datasets from up to and including 2021 to answer questions, so newer web dev technologies that are taught in TOP today may not have existed back then, so the time to complete TOP might have been significantly less in 2021 and earlier. Don't take the answer too seriously, it's just for fun!

Question: How long does does it take to complete the The Odin Project?

Answer: The Odin Project is a self-paced online curriculum for learning web development, and the time it takes to complete it can vary depending on several factors. These factors include your prior experience, the amount of time you can dedicate to learning each day or week, your learning style, and the complexity of the projects you choose to undertake.

On average, many learners have reported completing The Odin Project's core curriculum in around 3-6 months. However, it's important to note that this estimate can vary significantly. Some learners may complete it in a shorter time frame with more intensive study, while others may take longer if they prefer a slower pace or have other commitments.

The Odin Project offers a comprehensive learning path, covering various topics such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, databases, and more. Additionally, it encourages hands-on project building, which can take additional time depending on the complexity and scope of the projects you choose to tackle.

To make the most of your learning experience with The Odin Project, it's recommended to allocate dedicated study time, practice regularly, and engage with the community forums and resources available. Actively working on projects, seeking help when needed, and experimenting with what you've learned can also enhance your understanding and progress.

Remember that everyone's learning journey is unique, and the most important thing is to focus on understanding the concepts and building practical skills. Don't rush through the material just to complete it quickly. Take your time, ask questions, and enjoy the process of learning web development.

As the title says! Rough estimates are fine. Trying to plan my life here.Thank you!

I've seen a lot of people say it takes x months, but I think it would be more helpful to gather info on the amount of hours it can take for myself and others who are interested in the program since day to day free time and responsibilities can vary so much from person to person.

I'm making this post because I saw many people ask the same question..."How long will the Odin project take?". So I decided to time myself while going through the course. As said in the title I haven't finished the entire course but I do plan to time myself all the way.

Disclaimer: I'm not a complete beginner to programming. I'm doing a degree in ECE so we have to do stuff with micro-controllers. So I know a bit of c/c++ and assembly.

So here's how long each section of the foundations took me:

Introduction: 1hr 30

Installations: 7hrs

Git Basics: 1hr

Html Foundations: 4:hrs

Css Foundations: 6:hrs

Flexbox: 10hrs

JavaScript Basics: 43hrs

The BackEnd: 1hr 30

Total: 74hrs

Those times include the projects. Also I didn't go through the additional resources sections.

And here's how long each project took:

Recipes project: 2hrs

Landing page: 2hrs 30

Rock paper scissors : 3hrs

Etch a sketch: 3hrs 30

Calculator: 11hrs

As it regards to projects. I could have easily spent another 10-20 hours making them prettier and getting all the extra credits ..which I'lll probably do later. You might end up spending way more time on the design aspects.

So I started on May 10 and finished foundations today. Worked on it 19 days during that time. So on average about 4hrs a day. Hopefully this helps anyone who may have been wondering how long this might take them.

My thoughts? I'm really liking the project focused method and lack of hand holding. What's next for me? I'm going to go through the ruby track because it has a data structures and algorithms section ...and a javascript section . After that I'm going through full stack open but would be later in the year if all goes well.

Edit: Rock paper scissors actually took 3 hours. It seems I had the Revisiting rock paper scissors section recorded as a Dom manipulation session. Here's how I checked. Again Apologies

Hello I'm planning to start TOP I plan to do the foundations and Ruby on rails course, I can dedicate 2 hrs everyday. Based on my proficiency as a beginner coder how long will it take for me to comple the course

Is 1.5 years a reasonable time to complete everything? You could also convert it to hours if you wish.

Also that would be Including the new React section. I’ve been at it for about 9 months. I have just completed the To Do List in the javascript section which took me 10 days. I feel like i’m kind of slow despite sinking 3-4 hours a day into it, but that is just my pace.

I’m not comparing myself to anyone, just curious on a timeframe I can expect to be done at current rate. Thanks!

This is a long read (if anyone reads it at all). I just wanted to share my journey thus far.

Preface: I completed "Foundations" in just over 7 months.

I'd like to tell myself 7 months isn't bad, considering I work full time, but that isn't a good excuse. I see posts on here about the average completion time for Foundations being around 2 months, with some doing it in as little as 2 weeks... I certainly put in the effort to learn programming. Not only that, but I did it 5 days a week, as if I were in school, putting in hours before work, as well as time in the evening. It's depressing when I realize it took me almost 4x longer than the average person to complete the course. I don't like to compare myself to others, but it's hard not to in this case.

I'm not going to lie and say I haven't learned anything. That would be complete BS. But the last few months, it's like I am going backwards. When I encounter "complex" problems, they almost always make me blank out. When I can't break things down, I result to trial and error, hoping something will just work. It's embarrassing.

There were hiccups in the course, but it wasn't until Fundamentals 4 Test Driven Development where I actually got stuck. I spent over a week on exercises "removeFromArray" and "sumAll". I got absolutely nowhere with these, so I decided to find something to supplement my learning.

I took an 8-hour free JavaScript course on YouTube by Scrimba.com. Although I enjoyed the course, looking back, I learned almost nothing; It was very handy-holdy. I only retained a few things from it, mostly basic methods to interact with the DOM.

After that course, I returned to TOP TDD exercises, "confident" I could complete them. Well, I failed once again after another week of grinding... I decided to move ahead to the DOM section, revisiting Rock Paper Scissors, and then the Etch-a-Sketch project.

I spent a week and a half on the Etch-a-Sketch project and completed it + the extra credit task without help. That said, I am not proud of it. It was a lot of trial and error and very hacky methods to get some stuff to work.

Lacking in confidence and knowing that the next section, Fundamentals 5, contains more TDD exercises, I bought a JavaScript course from Udemy. I told myself I would ONLY do the fundamentals and solve any exercises / tasks they threw at me. Going through each lesson, I almost always implemented my own solution before the teacher gave the full breakdown or any hints. In the end, I did solve all the exercises on my own. After completing this course, I decided to change gears, before returning to TOP. I decided I would build 2 projects from scratch.

The first was another rock paper scissors game. This came out a lot better than the first one I built for TOP. I made the game playable with both a GUI and the console on the same webpage. I was happy with the results, but it took me a week to complete, which seems way too long for a basic project / second time doing it.

The second project I built was a blackjack game, which is not part of TOP curriculum and completely foreign to me. I completed it, but it's really a half-assed version of the game. I didn't realize there were so many rules and variations to Blackjack. My version is basically 1 player vs the computer. I couldn't figure out how to implement more players, so I stopped. My game works, but it's not really Blackjack. I have not returned to this project since finishing it.

Before returning to TOP, I did some "mini" projects, which I don't know if they were really any help to my learning. I just did them to stay motivated. I practiced conditionals, arrays, objects, functions, and rendering things to the DOM. I built some conversion calculators and did some things with images. Nothing to write home about.

Finally, I returned to TOP and once again I was not able to solve those Fundamentals 4 TDD exercises. Now I am really disheartened. After taking 2 courses, doing 2 projects, and practice on my own, I am right back where I left off: Stuck.

I pushed on to Fundamentals 5. I think I solved every task on the MDN article and all but one on JavaScript.info. I also solved all the array exercises from Wes Bos' JavaScript30 videos, but 2 of my solutions had parts that were not entirely correct. The JavaScript30 exercises took me multiple days to complete.

After the articles and exercises, I started Fundamentals 5 TDD exercises. It took 2 days to solve the first 2, calculator and palindromes. That was putting in 5+ hours each session.

I then got stuck on Fibonacci for 4 days. Absolutely embarrassing. Apparently this is a super basic algorithm exercise. After reading posts online, people said if you can't solve this, you aren't cut out to be a programmer. Great. I never could solve it, so I went on to finish the last 2 exercises, which took another 2 days to complete.

I then moved on to build the final project of the course, the calculator. It took me 11 days to complete this. It started out OK, but then I got stuck on Task 5 and began to question the operator function I created earlier. I spent 4 days trying to solve this and it was all just trial and error. I was just throwing things at the wall, hoping they would stick. In the end, I was able to get it working and solve all the extra credit tasks, but it's a mess. I made no use of objects or advanced array methods, because I couldn't figure out how to implement them. My calculator contained GIANT if/elseif/else conditional statements that really don't make sense. I was able to refactor them into a single function at the end, but it's still awful. This is easily the worst project I have made.

So, 7 months into my programming journey, I'm at a crossroads. I don't want to give up, especially after putting all this time in, but I feel I need to step back and look at the big picture. It's clear I have a poor understanding of the fundamentals, even after taking 3 courses... I see no reason to continue on to the Ruby on Rails or Fullstack JS path, as they will introduce more advanced concepts that will make me hit a wall. I just don't know where to go from here. Do I try to build some projects on my own again? Do I push through TOP hoping it will work out? Or do I pack it in?

I never expected to struggle this much... I'd like to think I am pretty computer savvy, but I now know that computer savvy does not translate into being good at programming or logical thinking. When I read success stories on this subreddit, instead of them motivating me, it just makes me feel worse about myself. I know I wouldn't be job ready in a years time or more. I never set that goal for myself. I did think I would complete the foundations a lot quicker and already be working through one of the main paths. My slow progress is discouraging and it's getting harder to stay motivated.

TLDR: I can barely grasp the fundamentals after 7 months. I struggle with or cannot solve the most basic of algorithms. I often result to trial and error to solve problems. I am no better at HTML or CSS and I have no eye for design.

I can't find the answer anywhere. How long is the Foundations course? Also, how long is the subsequent course in either Ruby or Java?

As someone who seriously is to stubborn to quit. I got to the last second last project on foundations javascript. Everything went smooth. It was the part where you use event listeners to change the color of a box and a choice to input as many boxes as you want.

Either way this is like my 5th time quiting and retry programming. I kept quitting because at first I was self conscious of my IQ and how I had a criminal record. Then when I was at work and realized if I dont pursue higher education I'm closing doors. So I'm not taking that chance. I'm also 24. My goal is to be 38 and have deep rooted software engineering skills. Able to write 1000s of lines of code.

I felt like I learned a lot in the Javascript foundation sections. It was a bit tricky but I managed to get through and loved the jumps in difficulty.

I'm just wondering. What were you capable of after finishing either the ruby on rails or js section. Could you create a full functioning site like Amazon or reddit. Reddit bots? Even thr backend functionality of Amazon?

And how long? How many hrs per day? I was doing around 3 hrs a day before sleeping just to feel the neuroplasticity effect. I quit for around 3 weeks though so I'm going to redo everything.

Non-native English speaker here.

I am a 33 year old Bangladeshi male. I have an MBA but no STEM undergrad. I can build websites on Wordpress and now I am trying to learn web development.

I am going through the Odin Project. I work at a bank, with commute its 14 hour days five days a week. So I only get the weekends off, where I can spend 8 hours on this learning. I want to learn web dev at the fastest possible time, so that I can leave this job.

Now my question is: given that I can only spend 8 hours a week learning, approximately how long is it likely to take me to finish the Foundation and Specialization course respectively?

All online resources do not mention a specific number of hours, so I am asking here. I know its impossible for people here to predict it given you know nothing about me, but please make a rough guess at least.

I just finished working my face off with the Odin Project. Finished fundamentals in 2-3 weeks (8 hours per day as fulltime job during vacation). The things I can make now and the knowledge I have now (it's a refresher, haven't coded in years) compared to 3 weeks ago is INSANE!

It's all laid out so well, it's free, the quality is high, it's easy to follow and understand. And also, it knows when it gives you more that you can chew, and it also has many times when it says 'It you don't quite get this year, read X article first'. So great.

I can recommend this to anyone learning programming. So happy!

https://www.theodinproject.com/

Hi there. (Mostly) noob here, I’ve been doing the Odin Project full JS stack since the first week of December, for 3-5 hours per week and I felt like sharing some thoughts and progress so far. I'm going to try and journal my progress every so often anyway as an aid to motivation, why not make it public?

The course itself seems to be written and structured well. This is the longest/most consistently I’ve stuck with any kind of online course which is partly on me having a hopefully better attitude to it and partly because the course has me feeling like I’m making little bits of progress consistently.

Other things to like about it: it links to external content often (good, not everything needs to be rewritten if it already has a solid tutorial); it’s sufficiently explicit about which bits of those external sources to read/watch and which not to, which exercises to follow along with etc; it reiterates the ‘we’ll do this topic in more detail later’ or ‘you don’t need a full understanding of this right now’ philosophy where appropriate; it’s a little soon to tell but does seem geared towards practical skills over pure theory/language learning (you spend a sufficiently long time before actually writing any code that it might be off-putting to some people. I really appreciated the early focus on git, I'm not as sure about setting up a Linux VM as the first task but it’s early days yet and that might prove invaluable going forward).

Progress (knowledge or skills that are new to me):

• A very top-level eli5 understanding of how a website is created and how that's accessed later.

• Set up a VM.

• First exposure to Linux and Terminal basics.

• Get Git and Github up and running for a single author.

• Simple version control (commit changes, checkout to revert local changes).

• Using Chrome dev tools: inspector and computed.

• Create web pages locally and link them, use local stylesheets.

• Basic HTML and CSS to the point I could create a web page and have it look not-terrible.

I've just finished the 'create a (nonfunctional) replica of the Google homepage' project now. The finished article is a web page that I built, and it's on the internet. That feels like an achievement.
That turned into a much bigger task than I first anticipated, I'd estimate it was 12+ hours of work for me. To be fair, part of the project brief is 'don't be a perfectionist' and I should probably have taken that on board more. On the other hand, I learned new things consistently while doing it, some of which I wouldn't have come across if I hadn't been digging in as deep as I could. Concepts like display, position and 'when something should be in a div' have been huge stumbling blocks for me in the little bit of web programming I've tried in the past, so I'm pleased with myself for breaking them down into small tasks in isolation and looking up resources. I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with those things yet, but I can use them and will know what I should be searching for the next time I build something and get stuck on those.

Invaluable lessons I should really remember:

• You can't undo checking out a file from git. Be sure you really want to revert those changes before doing that.

• Test it in isolation. Replicate it in codepen. When it works perfectly there, you can be pretty sure you've done something wrong in the live file, or that something you're not expecting to mess with it is messing with it.

• Not working? Put a 2px solid red border round it. You understand how borders work, that'll make it pretty obvious if the problem is with the new rule you don't fully understand yet, or if you've targeted the wrong element or left a comment unclosed on the prior rule.

• Still not working? You've not closed a comment or forgotten a colon or you don't know which side is left and which side is right.

• Comment your progress at the top of the file. You'll be coming back to this in a day or two, make it easy to pick up.

The Odin Project (TOP) involves significant reading and projects. Rough online estimates suggest the Foundations + Full Stack JavaScript path takes about 1000 hours, a figure often supported by success stories I've read.

Most successful students report spending 3-8 hours daily, typically finishing within a year. Some even finish in a few months by studying 10-12 hours daily, which is unsustainable for most people. However, success stories from those studying less than 2 hours a day are rare.

Based on the 1000-hour estimate (I know that it's a really rough one), this slower pace implies completion would take several years. This makes me wonder: has anyone successfully finished TOP studying 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes or less daily on average? If so, how long did it take?

I already know some of the basics (supersimpledev html/css/js youtube videos) and so I was wondering if 2 and a half years is enough to complete it if i do it for around 10-15 hours every week.

I am feeling EXTREMELY frustrated right now. I reached the rock paper scissor project and it has been the worst. I was not prepated at all to do it. Very important concepts that are needed to solve it were not taught in the previews lessons. I have been askng for help everyday and I am not even halway through it yet. I am asking here I see everybody here praising the course as being the best think in the world and I cant help but think that maybe I am the problem here.

Just want to know how much time to spend in between work and weekends?

Question in title.