So, software development has been the talk the talk of the town for many years now and after much hesitation the web development community seems to be in agreement that Javascript is the language of choice for developing websites and web applications. So, in this article I’ll be listing down the best ways for you to learn javascript for free and make a career out of it.
Why Javascript ?
There are tons of languages and tools and frameworks for you to choose from in today’s date that can make you what we call a web developer. So why choose Javascript ? Well, for starters let me tell you why I, who was a Ruby on Rails developer earlier shifted to the Javascript and Node ecosystem and got my current job as a full stack Javascript engineer.
In my early days in college Rails was the hottest web technology that was in market. Everyone wanted to be a Ruby developer and so did I. I learnt Ruby on Rails for nearly 2.5 years in college (self-studied, actually) and by that time a new hot framework came to town by the name of React. Angular was already there and the front-end game was taken up a notch. To learn React, I had to study Javascript quite deeply which I hadn’t earlier.
Once I did that, there was no going back. I knew Node had already taken up most of the new market and so I shifted to Node for my backend development as well. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that difficult. Why? Because I already knew Javascript !
The most important reason to learn Javascript and why it got such a boom in the past few years is it allows you to use the same language in the backend and the frontend for your web development . How awesome is that? You just learn one language perfectly and you can call yourself a frontend + backend developer.
Javascript free resources
Now, the thing you are here for. Even though I have earlier written an article on the best javascript and nodeJS resources earlier, I’m rewriting it because the resources on that article were not all free.
So, here are the best ways for you to learn Javascript for free this year !
Eloquent Javascript
This is the holy grail of Javascript books and was also my first resource in learning Javascript as a beginner. This book is available on the internet for free ( click on the link in the heading). Personally, even though it’s first edition was written many many years ago, I still believe it to be one of the best ways for anyone to start learning Javascript.
It explains nearly all the topics of javascript that you might want to learn as a beginner and also has neat exercises between chapters to keep you on your toes.
Recommendation Rating -> 4/5
The Net Ninja
My personal favourite free resource to learn Javascript in this list is the Youtube channel by the name of The Net Ninja. The guy has neat playlists on nearly each and every Javascript and web development topic that you might want to learn.
His teaching style is very intriguing and he never bores me (like many of the other youtubers do). I highly recommend all his Javascript playlists and especially the ones on Asynchronous Javascript for you to watch.
Recommendation Rating -> 5/5
The Modern Javascript Tutorial
If you have previously searched for the best free resources (which I assume you have :P) , you must surely have seen this in nearly all the lists mentioned somewhere or the else. That is how comprehensive this course is.
I think the only resource that goes from A to Z of javascript programming for the browser and DOM Manipulation. I though did not enjoy other sections of this course as much. But just for the DOM and browser part of this course it just has to be on my list. Also, it’s FREE.
Recommendation Rating -> 3/5
Techsith
One of the most underrated resources you’ll ever come across. This youtube channel is SUPERB in explaining the most complex and sophisticated parts of the Javascript language with ease. I learnt a lot of difficult topics from this channel.
What I personally used to do whenever I found something difficult to understand was to just search for Techsith’s video on that topic and most of the time it was present, ready to save the day for me.
Recommendation Rating -> 4/5
You Don’t Know JS
A great series of books that for me were unfortunately too long to complete but all my peers and friends who have gone through the series don’t have better words to say about this series.
With different books on different Javascript topics hosted for free on Github, this book deep dives into all the important topics of Javascript that you ever wanted to learn.
Recommendation Rating -> 3.5/5
Best ways to learn Javascript
Now, those were just the resources that I or any other blog post can list you down. But, this is not the only way to learn Javascript and become a web developer. If you really want to be a good Javascript developer you need to follow some other things as well.
Just learning the syntax or learning just the concepts behind how things work is just not enough for you to gain the knowledge that you want. There are several other things you need to do in order to master javascript and yeah, those are free too.
Make personal projects
I just cannot stress the importance of this thing enough, I cannot. You may go through many courses, many video lectures, read an awful high number of books but you won’t be a master developer without making personal projects.
You can start with small projects on Vanilla javascript like to-do lists or small book stores or something like that and from there keep on increasing the complexity of your project.
Making your own projects will teach you more than anything else ever could. PERIOD. You will face challenges that you’ll need to know solutions for and those will teach you much more than any book ever will. So, turn your computer on and start with your own personal project NOW.
Reach out to the community
One of the best ways you can learn is from other developers, senior developers who are much more experienced than you will always have something or the else to teach you about. You can learn from your peers and often from Junior devs also. So, what I recommend you is to join communities on Facebook, on Twitter , on special websites like dev.to and get in touch with other developers.
What this does is create motivation within you to keep on improving yourself and also can help you technically and non-technically. Don’t be hesitant to reach out to people, EVER.
Teach other people
Now, this is what I am doing right now and what I do on my website. I try to improve myself technically and my soft-skills by constantly trying to teach people about things I might know about more than they do. This is a great way to help the community as well as improve your skills.
Method Recommendation Rating Effort
Eloquent JS 4/5 4/5
Net Ninja 5/5 4/5
Modern JS Tut. 3/5 4/5
Techsith 4/5 3/5
You don’t know JS 3.5 / 5 5/5
Own Projects 5/5 5/5
Reaching out and teaching 4/5 4/5
This is it guys. The best ways to become a javascript developer for free. If you have any ideas or ways that you like to learn, please do comment them below.
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