DEV Community: Thinkpader

Best Udemy Courses To Level Up Your Web Development Skills

Thinkpader — Sun, 09 May 2021 08:39:04 +0000

Are you a beginner developer and want to level up your dev game and progress faster than your competition? Read on and I’ll give you honest reviews of some of the courses I’ve taken on Udemy.

These are courses that I’ve paid for (using my hard earned money) and this article is in no way sponsored by Udemy. There are no affiliate links so you can be doubly sure that I’m not putting any course here just to earn some extra bucks. If you wish to purchase any of these courses then make sure you wait for a sale (Udemy has them on a bi-monthly basis).

For Absolute Beginners

The Web Developer Bootcamp 2021 by Colt Steele

This is the new version of Colt’s The Web Developer Bootcamp, Udemy’s most popular web development course. This course has been completely overhauled to prepare students for the 2021 job market, and has over 60 hours of brand new content. Some of the highlights of the course are:-

The instructor, Colt Steele, is extremely knowledgable and witty. He makes the tricky stuff a lot less tricky, his explanations are spot on and his cat and dog jokes make you chuckle.
The course everything a beginner web developer needs to know — from HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript all the way to Node.js, Express and MongoDB.
It follows a logical structure so that the student (you!) is not overwhelmed or confused.
There are a lot of mini exercises to re-enforce what you are learning and make it stick.
You make a BIG project towards the end and learn Node.js, Express and MongoDB in the process.

Overall, this a great intro to the world of web development for beginners and you can’t go wrong with this one. Get the course here .

Levelling Up Your CSS and JavaScript

Although Colt’s course covers the basics of CSS and JavaScript, I think spending some time to brush up what you’ve just learnt and more importantly why is does what it does will go a long way in making you a better developer. And the next two courses are perfect for that.

Advanced CSS and Sass: Flexbox, Grid, Animations and More by Jonas Schmedtmann

This is the perfect course to level up your CSS skills and getting a better understanding of CSS and even SaaS. Some highlights of the course are:-

Understand how CSS works behind the scenes. Learn about the cascade, specificity, inheritance, value processing, the visual formatting model, the box model, box types, positioning schemes and stacking contexts etc.
Learn about CSS architecture. *Learn about Flexbox and Grid layout.
Introduction to Sass.
Lots of cool and real world projects.

Get the course here .

The Modern Javascript Bootcamp Course (2021) by Colt Steele and Stephen Grider

One of the best courses to get an in depth understanding of JavaScript by two of Udemy’s best instructors — Colt Steele and Stephen Grider.

The first half of the course is mostly theory and mini exercises and is taught by Colt. The second half will have you build a lot of cool and interesting projects that you can use in your portfolio. Some of the cool things you’ll build in the course:-

Fetch and manage information from third-party API’s.
Build command line tools from scratch using Node JS.
Build a fully-featured E-Commerce application from scratch — including production-grade authentication.

Get the course here

Learning React — the HOTTEST JavaScript Framework

Frameworks make your life easier by doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So once you’ve learnt enough JavaScript it’s time to learn React. React was created by Facebook and is the most widely used JavaScript framework.

It’s also in a lot of demand in the job market. So learning React with increase your employability and increase your chances of getting a job.

React Tutorial and Projects Course by John Smilga

Although this course is by a lesser known Udemy instructor, it does not disappoint. The instructor makes React concepts easy to understand. The course uses the latest method of declaring functional components. Some of the highlights of the course are:-

Start from the very basics of React.
Learn about functional components.
Learn the various hooks such as useState, useEffect etc.
Make a lot of projects to practice what you’ve learnt.
Lots of repetition to make sure what you learn sticks.

Get the course here

Concluding Thoughts

The courses given above are a great starting point for someone looking to dive into the world of web development. As I’ve already said in my first blog post the secret to becoming a successful web developer are:-

Practice what you learn — make your own mini projects to solidify your knowledge.
Be consistent — take out time to practice coding everyday.
Focus — pick a language or technology and stick with it. Don’t hop from one thing to another.
Avoid distractions — switch off your phone or keep it in airplane mode.
Take your time — don’t compare your progress with others.

So that’s it from me for today. I hope you’ll benefit from the courses that I’ve outlined above. See you guys soon.

My Journey: From a Code Newbie to Advanced Beginner

Thinkpader — Sat, 08 May 2021 16:44:24 +0000

Are you looking to dive into the exciting world of coding and technology but don't know where to start? Do you want to code your own app but have a full time job and a family to look after? Read on as I tell you about my story to on how I got into this exciting field! But before we move on:-

Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.

A Little Background

I've always been fascinated with technology and got into computers at an early age. I got my first computer when I was in 10th grade. Initially, all I did was play games all day. But I took a computer science class 11th grade and just fell in love with programming. I even built my school's website! Woohoo!!

But life had other plans. After graduation I got into a totally unrelated field. But the nerd in me never died. Even though I have a full time job which pays well (according to Indian standards at-least) the programming bug never went away.

Starting Troubles

My job is demanding in time and energy, both physical and mental. So when I decided that I wanted to re-learn programming, I had to allot my time wisely. I started with HTML and CSS and built a simple website. I was ugly, not mobile friendly and had not JavaScript. But boy was I proud of my work! This was back in 2016.

Fast forward a year and life got in the way. I had some time consuming job assignments and programming fell by the wayside. However it was still at the back of my mind.

Getting Back on Track

2020 is the year that we're all gonna remember as the year of the pandemic. Like everybody else, I too was stuck at home. Due to the hands on nature of my job the workload greatly reduced. So now I had time to rekindle the flame of coding.

I signed up on Udemy and bought Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp. It's a great course and became the foundation of all I learnt thereafter. I started with basics i.e. HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The course also covers Node.js and I had a great time learning that too.

Getting Stuck in Tutorial Hell

After completing Colt's course I felt pretty comfortable in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. However, I didn't consolidate my learning my building personal projects but took one Udemy course after another. And the cheap price tag didn't help either! I learnt JavaScript and CSS again, Node.js, React, Wordpress, Next.js and the list goes on.

Although I'd spent hundreds of hours learning new stuff, I had no practical knowledge. Every time I sat down to make a personal project I just froze. I would stare at the blinking cursor of my code editor and all the knowledge that I'd acquired just went out the window.

Coming out of the Rabbit Hole

This is when I realised that I needed to stop learning new things and first apply my knowledge. So I started to make small projects. Projects like todo list, calculator, landing page etc.

I know this sounds clichéd but working on your own projects is THE most important thing you can do. It's been talked about so much but so many newbie developers (like myself) don't follow this simple piece of advice and waste a lot of their time.

The 10 Commandments of Becoming a Developer

1. Begin with the Fundamentals

Start with the very basics. In my case it was HTML and CSS.
Pick a language to learn (JavaScript and Python are good first choices). Don't go too deep. Switching from one language to another is fairly easy.

2. Build Small Projects, Then Throw Them Away

Build a lot of trivial apps just for the heck of it. This one step is going to supercharge your learning process X10.
Build small things like a todo list app, a calculator, tic-tac-toe game etc to apply your knowledge.

3. Avoid Tutorial Hell

Don't try to learn everything at once.

4. Be Consistent

Code for an hour each day.
Try to allot a specific time where you code each day.

5. Don't be Overwhelmed

Remember the famous saying:-

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Take one technology. Learn it enough. Build something. Throw it away. Rinse. Repeat.

So that's all for today. As you can see, I've made some common mistakes that can be totally avoided but made them anyway. I hope you take a leaf out of my book and don't repeat these mistakes. At last, remember:-