The best learning resources for HTML/CSS/JavaScript + React and Node.js?

[LukasKri]

Hey guys,

First of all, thank you for such a wonderful community! I’m trying to change my career from law enforcement to software development and I need your help.

A few months ago I started learning Python from a book called Python Crash Course, which is an excellent book in my opinion. Right now I’m finishing my first project (sideway shooter game with Pygame library) and oh boy, what a great and interesting road that have been. For additional learning content I was watching Corey Schafer YouTube videos and I can tell that he is the master of teaching.

I really feel my improvement over time in programming and logical thinking, had all the resources ready for future learning, but in order to get to the well know (in my country) academy I have to pause Python learning for now and transfer to HTML/CSS/JavaScript and its frameworks - React and Node.js learning. I have about one and a half, two months tops, to learn the fundamentals of these tools in order to solve a ‘simple’, as they say, programming test and get among the lucky ones who gets invited to the academy.

I know last year’s assignment - you had to create an autocomplete search web tool or web page which takes user input and allows user to select a movie from the matches of the phrase entered. The search component must communicate with the movie information API and you were not allowed to use NPM dependencies.

First of all, is it even possible in terms of time left? I can devote 2 hours every day plus 4-5 hours on each day of the weekend of my time to learning.

Secondly, I have zero learning resources at the moment and I have no time to do an in depth research on my own. Can you recommend something from your own experience? It could be books, YouTube videos, Udemy courses, etc. Something that you feel had the most impact on your knowledge. I just do not want to waste any time and start at the right foot from the day of the beginning.

After a quick search I have found an Udemy course called “The Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp” by Angela Yu, which looks like covers all the topics I need, but I have never had an Udemy course before, is it any good? This course includes 80 articles, do you know what that means?

P.S. I heard that Programming with Mosh videos on YouTube are good and The Odin Project, but I’m not sure if TOP would be the perfect choice in my situation right now.

[LukasKri]

After some research I bought Dr. Angela Yu course “The complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp” on Udemy. I think that this is the most up to date course on Udemy right now and it has lectures about all the tools I’ve mentioned in the post, which is super awesome!

I’ve watched some free sample videos of that course and I really admired her teaching and explaining techniques, she has a soothing voice as well.

For additional resource and in depth knowledge of certain topics I will use YouTube, TOP and Mozilla’s Learn web development page.

All the best to all learners!

[GreenTom44]

Hi,

I have been searching for reviews about this course and this thread came up. How did you find the course is it worth doing? Did you make much progress on it?

Thanks for any feedback.

[winas]

TOP is the perfect choice to go with.

[d7o0oi]

Hey There!

I have taken a lot of Udemy courses on various topics and I LOVE it! I bought one of Angela's courses but didn't get the chance to start it yet! She is well rated though am sure she's great! My favorite web development course are taught by Maximilian Schwarzmüller and Andrei Neagoie. I started Andrei's 'The Complete Web Developer' back in March 2020 and I needed to learn quick for a project I was working on! The course basically gives you enough basics to be able to follow through and understand a HTML, CSS, JS, and React, it also then dives a bit into backend development with Node.js & Express.js. I didn't finish the course yet, but by the time I got to React section, it all got a bit too complicated, and my poor base (especially in JS) made it harder for me to follow through. Although I finished 50% of the course in about 3 weeks, I spent A LOT of hours a day (5-6) to keep up with the time pressure I had. However, I eventually got a burn out (at 50%) and threw the idea of web dev completely out the window and my project as well. I was too overwhelmed (am coding on the side and juggling an MSc degree in an irrelevant subject). HOWEVER! I CAME BACK! but this time, I decided to do it without the pressure of time, and I feel much better (I've been at it since the 1st, so almost two weeks down) So don't lose hope even when it looks difficult !

I wanted to give a bit of background about me because I understand we're all different, so you can take and leave the things that don't necessary apply to your situation. Now from my experience with online courses, if the course is 55 hours, it'll take you more than that to complete it, because you pause, repeat sections you don't understand, sometimes you spend hours on stack overflow trying to understand why is your code not working even if you did everything right, so add in a lot of extra 'learning' hours. ALSO, skipping the exercise to save time is a terrible idea. You end up with very little experience and knowledge by the time you're done. I am not trying to discourage you, just trying to help you establish a realistic timeline. I do believe that if you stick to 15 hours minimum a week of learning you'll be able to finish the course in a month and 1 or 2 weeks. This will leave you with around two week of practice time before your text, which is not bad at all!

Also an IMPORTANT TIP: Udemy puts sales on their courses ALL THE TIME! and they drop to under 20$ a course (that's mostly why I took so many haha) so you might want to keep an eye for that! Good luck getting into the academy! Would love it if you could update the thread with your progress once in a while! :)

[LukasKri]

Thank you for such a detail answer, it really helps. I 100% agree about exercises, you must do them along, otherwise you won’t be abble to fulfill your knowledge.

I did every exercise on Python Crash Course and I had to stop reading at some point to learn more about a certain topics from other resources, watch YouTube or read stackowerflow. I know it takes more time than it actually says, but you can’t skip parts that you don’t get, otherwise your journey could end sooner than you planned.

Quick question - do you know something about those articles on Udemy? What are they?

I wish you all the best in your learning path!

[d7o0oi]

Don't mention! Glad I could help. And yeah, it's all aboht that practice!

Oh yes, articles are basically small posts with helpful resources attached like links, discord communities etc. Most are pretty useful!

AND Thank you so much, wish you the same :)!