The 3 best way to learn Java in 2023

Tim Kutnick — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:59:00 +0000

I work at Airbnb and needed to pick up Java to contribute to some backend work for my team. Here's how I'm picking up Java in 2023 after scouring the web for the best Java courses and tutorials:

Easiest to get started: Educative

The Java from Scratch course from Educative has an interactive coding environment in the browser which makes it easy to get started. The course is FREE, has 12 hours of content, and it's text-based (no videos) so you can complete exercises quickly. The course is designed for beginners who have no prior programming experience. The course covers the basics of Java programming and gradually builds up to more advanced topics.

Most Popular: Codecademy

Codecademy's Learn Java Course has 3 MILLION students enrolled. The next most popular course in the courses I researched was a Udemy Java course with 750K+ students. The Codecademy course is similar to Educative, with an interactive coding environment in the browser, text-based instruction (no videos), and a 25 hour completion time. That said, it will cost you $50 per month to get access to all of the content in its beginner course as well as the intermediate course content.

Most Content: Jetbrains Academy

JetBrains is a software development company best known for its IntelliJ IDEA, a Java integrated development environment (IDE) used by developers worldwide. They created a Java Backend Developer course with 230 hours of content, 393 topics, and 40 practice projects. The course also has 18K students enrolled, a 4.6 rating on their content, and has been updated in 2023. It will cost you ~$50 / month or ~$20 / month if paid annually after a free 7 day trial.

One more to consider: Udemy

Udemy's Java Programming Masterclass updated to Java 17 course has 101 hours of content, video instruction, and 750K+ students. That makes it the course with the second most popularity and second most content on my list. This course would be best for those that like learning from videos and don't mind doing a little developer environment setup before starting their coding journey. It'll cost you $16.58 for a monthly subscription or $99 for just the course.

Hope this helps you narrow down your Java learning options! Let me know if I missed a good one.

Want to learn some frontend too? Checkout my article on how to learn React!

The 3 Best Free React tutorials in 2023

Tim Kutnick — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:10:54 +0000

Reactjs.org recommends a bunch of free react courses, tutorials and videos, but I went through all of them and found the best one.

Who am I? I'm a Senior Software Engineer, Frontend at Airbnb. I've been using React since 2016 and I want to make it easy for you to learn and use React as well.

Without further ado, the data:

Based on the data, I recommend Scrimba's free "Learn React" course for the following reasons:

it includes videos
it has an in browser IDE (integrated development environment) so you can code in the browser instead of fiddling with a local developer environment setup
its content is up to date
it has a follow on advanced course ($30/month subscription, another 12H+ of content)
it has over 200K students enrolled and includes a ton of content with 152 lessons in its free course

Codecademy's similarly named "Learn React" course is a close second. While it has almost twice as many students enrolled, it is a purely text based tutorial and the projects/quizzes cost extra (up to $50/month). Its content is pretty comprehensive but can't compare to the 152 lessons Scrimba offers. Codecademy's advanced course is also much shorter when compared to Scrimba's advanced course.

At this point, you should be clicking over to Scrimba to start learning React, but if you wanted some insight into Egghead's "The Beginner's Guide to React" here it is: it's all videos and there isn't a place to code in the browser, but it is taught by one of the more famous Javascript engineers out there, Kent C. Dodds. If you want to just watch some videos taught by an expert, this is a good one.