Hi, I’m Brian, a former senior software engineer and now industry mentor at Pathrise. I have worked with hundreds of software engineers to help them land their dream jobs in tech. Check out my review of Educative.
- What does Educative do?
- Who is Educative for?
- What does Educative cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Educative
- Alternatives to Educative
- How does Educative compare to Pathrise?
What does Educative do?
With free and paid resources, Educative is a software engineering interview prep tool. They have a variety of in-depth learning tracks and courses. They offer introductory courses in 7 programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, HTML, and R. Students can also take advanced courses in topics like machine learning, React for front-end developers, and C++ for programers. Those who are using Educative for interview prep can take in-depth tracks that teach programming languages as well as courses that cover specific topics, such as algorithms, system design, concurrency, and recursion.
Using the dashboard, people can keep track of their progress, see a list of free offerings, and register for courses. Lessons for courses and in-depth tracks include text-based explanations of important topics, quizzes, and real-world examples (known as code snippets). There are also coding challenges and playgrounds that offer in-browser coding environments. With the Edpresso feature, people can find answers to frequently asked questions, such as “What is service-oriented architecture?” If the answer to their question is not available, users can submit their question to the Educative team by suggesting a “shot.”
Who is Educative for?
Software engineers looking to brush up on their skills or practice for their technical interviews can benefit from Educative. The courses and lessons are a good option for people who want to learn new programming languages from scratch.
What does Educative cost? How much work is involved?
Some Educative courses, like “Learn Rust from Scratch,” are free. In-depth tracks are more expensive. The most expensive is “Ace the C++ Coding Interview”, which costs $471. They also offer a subscription plan, which grants users unlimited access to all 140 Educative courses/in-depth tracks for $20.79 per month.
To create an account for free, users register with their name and email address.
Ratings and reviews
In general, the reviews online for Educative are positive. Some users, though, have pointed out that there are areas for improvement.
According to one user on a Reddit thread, Educative “is good. Not perfect and definitely not a one stop shop. But the structure is good.”
Echoing this, another reviewer on the same thread said that Educative “needs a little more editing on their end, however they did respond to my feedback in two days’ time, clarified what my issue was and they updated the article immediately.” The same reviewer also warned, “if you prefer to watch videos vs. reading you will not get that on Educative, the material is all reading with interactive coding environments and short GIFs to illustrate how data structures operate.”
TECHNOBS and Coding Sessions felt that Educative was a good resource for beginners, as well as those who are studying Python.
According to the Coding Sessions reviewer, the Educative “Data Structures in Python: An Interview Refresher” is “a perfect course for interview preparation for Python. It covers all basic data structures and related algorithms. There are a lot of exercises to try out for each data structure.”
More reviews
One DEV community member recommended Educative, which is a “text-based course platform,” as an alternative to Pluralsight and Udemy, “which are video based platforms.” Another DEV reviewer noted, “There are a few things that separate Educative from other platforms and one of the big ones is their coding playgrounds. You don’t have to spend any time setting up your web dev environment or hit your head on the wall when stuff isn’t working. It’s all in the browser, ready to go where you can edit/run code and see the results in real time.”
On Blind, one user said that the “Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions” course was “good enough for me to pass [my LinkedIn interview].” Similarly, one Quora reviewer described it as a “great course. The real value in the course is in the system design problems in my opinion.”
Alternatives to Educative
If you decide not to use Educative, there are a number of alternatives to help prepare you for your technical interviews.
- A good alternative is AlgoExpert, which is a platform where software engineers can practice questions that cover a variety of interview topics.
- Created by a former Google software engineer, Interview Cake is a study tool that teaches people the best way to think about technical interview questions so that they perform well on interview day. Discover how Interview Cake can help you by reading our review.
- Similarly, Codebasil features questions written by software engineers at top tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
- One of the most popular options, Leetcode has over 1,050 interview-type questions. Premium subscribers have access to problems based on actual company questions.
- Coderbyte hosts an online editor and offers tens of thousands of user solutions. Learn more about Coderbyte in our review.
- You can also consider Edabit or Skilled.dev, which are online collections of coding challenges in 8 languages, including C++, JavaScript, and Python.
- HackerRank is a common tool used by companies to evaluate software engineers. They offer practice questions on their platform, which mimics the environment that people will likely be tested in.
- CodinGame, Codewars, CodeChef, and CodeSignal turn interview practice problems into challenges in order to gamify the interview prep experience.
More alternatives
- Those looking to participate in mock interviews with software engineers at top tech companies should check out Interviewing.io. Learn more about Interviewing.io in our review.
- Similarly, Gainlo and Tech Mock Interview offer mock interviews for software engineers looking to practice their skills.
- Those who are looking to conduct mock interviews with their peers can consider Pramp.
- Daily Coding Problem is a newsletter that sends 1 practice interview problem directly to your inbox each day. The questions are free, but users must subscribe to access the solutions.
- Similarly, Quastor sends a daily newsletter with practice problems. In addition, they offer a free online course for interview prep.
- For people looking to prep with real world problems, CodeKata provides challenges that mimic requests from real tech companies.
- With exercises in Python and JavaScript for beginners and advanced engineers, CheckiO is a good free resource to check out.
How does Educative compare to Pathrise?
Educative is a tool for software engineers who are looking to prepare for technical interviews. While users can submit technical questions using the Edpresso feature, they do not receive 1-on-1 guidance or support on their job search.
Pathrise is a full service organization that helps people land their dream job in tech. We work extensively with software engineers by providing technical workshops, 1-on-1 mentoring sessions, and pair programming sessions. In addition, we offer guidance on all other components of the job search, including resume and LinkedIn optimization, behavioral interview preparation, reverse recruiting strategies, salary negotiation, and more.
Advancing technical skills is a crucial aspect of landing a job as a software engineer, so fellows in our program should feel free to use Educative, along with our technical workshops, to deepen their programming knowledge so that they approach their interviews with confidence.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. With our tips and guidance, we’ve seen our fellows interview scores double.
If you are interested in working 1-on-1 with any of our mentors to optimize your job search, become a Pathrise fellow.
Apply today.
