Building Better Coders: Why Online Courses Need to Narrow Their Focus

Quantity Over Quality
The issue stems from an effort to appeal to as many learners as possible. Most online platforms design their courses to attract the widest audience, which often means cramming as much content as they can into a short period. As a result, many coding courses offer a little bit of everything – basic syntax, writing functions, working with data structures, and a brief introduction to debugging – but rarely give students the depth of understanding needed to truly grasp a programming language.

Some courses promise to take you from beginner to job-ready in just a few hours, rushing from syntax basics to full-scale applications without stopping to build a strong foundation. The problem is not the length, it is the lack of focus and depth. When learners are not given the chance to master the fundamentals, those flashy outcomes rarely translate into real-world capability. The result is a false sense of progress that quickly fades once they return to their day jobs.

Learning That Fades Over Time
As someone with 10 years of coding experience, I have had the opportunity to observe a lot of colleagues and peers who have taken several online courses to learn a new programming language. The problem they face is not unfamiliar. They get through the course, tick the boxes, complete the exercises, but when they go back to their day-to-day jobs, they struggle to apply what they have learned. The lessons are quickly forgotten, not because they are irrelevant, but because the course design is too generalised to be practical.

This is a common experience for many learners. They are exposed to a variety of concepts, but because they are not instantly applicable to a real-world context, the knowledge does not stick.

Why Focus Matters
Learning a programming language is a lot like learning a spoken language – it is most effective when it is focused and practical. If your goal is to have everyday conversations with locals, spending hours memorising grammar tables or reading textbooks this is not the best approach. You would be far better off practising listening and speaking in real-world situations, focusing on the vocabulary and situations you are most likely to encounter. The same goes for coding: instead of skimming through every possible topic, learners benefit most from focused study in the areas they will actually use. Mastery comes from relevance, not coverage.

Online courses need to stop trying to be a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Instead, they should focus on providing deep dives into specific areas – techniques that are used in common practice. By teaching fewer concepts but in more detail, learners would be far better equipped to apply what they have learned when they need it most.

What Should Change?
1. Narrower Focus: Online courses should aim for specialisation, offering in-depth exploration of individual topics rather than trying to cover everything.
2. More Practical Application: Instead of just teaching theory or toy problems, coding courses should incorporate real-world use cases that align with what learners are likely to encounter on the job.
3. Incremental Mastery: Learners should be given the chance to thoroughly practice each concept before moving on. Mastery over a few topics will always trump surface-level knowledge of many.
4. Relevance to Industry Standards: Curriculum designers should also pay close attention to the actual syntax and techniques used in practice. Teaching out-of-date methods or abstract concepts with little applicability only adds to the problem.

This is the philosophy that shaped the coding course I recently built – focused not on teaching everything, but on teaching what is actually useful. It is designed for people who want to apply what they have learnt straight away, not just tick off a certificate. Like many others, I was frustrated by how little impact some courses had on real-world work. So, I created something I believe helps bridge that gap.

Coding courses should not aim to impress with how much they cover – they should aim to empower with what they teach well. When learners walk away with skills they can immediately use, they do not just retain knowledge – they grow in confidence, capability, and value. That is the kind of learning that sticks. That is the kind of course we need more of.