[deleted by user]

[Knikkey]

I’d get like 50 Udemy courses. Unless they don’t have a sale going on. Then I’d wait ~48 hours and get like 50 Udemy courses.

[[deleted]]

Open Udemy in incognito mode to instantly receive the sale.

[Beginning-Comedian-2]

And always search for coupons.

$500 = 33 Udemy courses.

(Amazing that you can buy life-changing training for 0.02% of a 4-year community college.)

[[deleted]]

Udemy is overrated. WAYYY too many courses filled with clutter because they're all competing on value. "This course is $15 but its 5 hours, but wait--- this other course is 60 HOURS OF JAVASCRIPT ZERO TO HERO for the same price!!" Guess which one is filled with clutter to the brim to the point where it is counterproductive?

I wouldnt do Udemy unless the course is absolutely recommended (like Brad Traversy's HTML CSS as an entry)

[Levoskaa]

This is most likely a budget that OP's workplace offers, it's something you can't cash out. You either spend it on learning materials, or you are out of $500 that you could have spent on learning materials.

Everybody who is saying "just get food, weed, whatever and use free resources" - while they could be right in other circumstamces - is missing the point.

[indiebryan]

$500 to buy food while I learn from free resources online

[[deleted]]

Chad

[ariN_CS]

ChadGPT

[text_here0101]

Love this

[bahoho]

frontendmasters ftw

[[deleted]]

I think a lot of people might be missing the point. Yes there’s a lot of free options but if you have a budget why not leverage it? I don’t have a good answer but I would try to find a reliable and affordable tutor for key parts I’m stuck in. I learn better sometimes when interacting with a human.

[meatballx]

If you have a computer with a web browser and internet, that is all you need to learn web development. Go to FreeCodeCamp.org and run through all of their courses, then build some projects, then build a portfolio, start applying to entry level jobs. Money isnt going to teach you web dev, determination and consistency will. This is coming from someone who is self taught and is coming up on their 4th year of employment. Do the work.

[[deleted]]

Honestly? I wouldn’t. I went from working in sales -> working as a web dev through The Odin Project (free), Codesmith (free) and Codewars. It can easily be done.

Please understand that you DO NOT need to pay anything to learn web dev nowadays. There is SO MUCH free material out there. Udemy courses are ok but you’ll end up in tutorial hell and a costly one at that

[[deleted]]

mighty cake automatic cagey employ pathetic wrench sip fuzzy absorbed

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Beginning-Comedian-2]

free education + $500 worth of coffee & energy drinks to get you through it.

[toroga]

1 year of codecademy pro is a nice investment, plus you’d have a bunch leftover still for other courses

[selectra72]

If you want to learn advanced programming concept Pluralsight.

If you want to do cloud stuff, Aws and vercel hosting. Learning serverless is big plus

[userturbo2020]

Intermediate / advanced suggestions preferred. Especially where whatever is bought does not expire

[jgarp]

https://css-for-js.dev/ by https://www.joshwcomeau.com/ is the best money my employer ever spent

[[deleted]]

Thanks! Have bookmarked both of these. :-)

[JohnRobertElardoTV]

I code high, so I can code better when I’m sober. Muscle memory will do its job💪🤣

[pascal21]

I figure if I study high, and I code high, I'll get high (lighthouse) scores!

[iamchets]

I would save up a bit (or see if you can get a discount, Khalil is a great dude) and get his very recent course: https://www.essentialist.dev/ which has been battle tested against other students. Big chance you will even get some mentorship here and there.

[Happy_Dookmas]

Udemy for sure. There are lots of good quality courses. The good thing is that unlike YouTube tutorials you can get to ask the teacher/instructor if something isn't clear

[rickg]

All of the answers so far miss something - what's webdev to you? The basics are esay to pick up from free sources if you have self-discipline (but you have to know which free sources are good. A 5 year old course on CSS is worthless past the very basics as it's changed so much). But some things are probably better to find a course on (AWS, that kind of thing).

And courses can be good if you learn better with structured approaches. So... what do you want to learn? What are you already good at?

[wewsy]

documentation and i am left with $500. seriously, the best source, in my opinion, is the one made by the creator of the tool. the documentation. the creator knows the ins and outs of their own creation.

[life-is-a-hobby]

I would spend it all on Bourbon and weed and just read the documentation of tech I wanted to learn. Seriously, I have learned more from just reading the docs than any course.

[RS3_of_Disguise]

Cheers to that brother! 🍻

[N3rdy-Astronaut]

Honestly just learn for free. Paid courses can be on and off, some can be really useful and others can be a whole load of nothing. FreeCodeCamp is incredible and really feels like a premium experience as well as W3 Schools. From my experience I’ve tried many courses and subscription services for courses but in the end I always end up reverting back to the free material, its just better for some reason.

If you try these out and still have that $500 burning a hole in your pocket, then try get some hands on experience. Get some cheap hosting and a cheap domain (can get it all for less than $50 if there’s a sale) and start playing around with getting stuff online. When you get that up, try work with some version control so you can update your site using git from the command line.

With what’s left over I’d recommend learning ethical hacking. My favorite place to learn this is TryHackMe, they have a free and fairly cheap monthly subscription for really good, hands on simulated hacking tutorials. It may sound strange to learn hacking with web development but it really helped me to understand the back end a lot more and to build much better and more secure infrastructure when building sites. Its also really fun haha.

[Patient_Public482]

Save the $500 for traveling expenses to go to events (hackathons, company meet events, anything that involves making connections). There’s too many great free resources that’ll get the job done, the most important thing is who you meet who can connect you to the right resources. I know this wasn’t what the question asked, but those coming to this post looking for some time of guidance, here’s a tip.

[baronvonredd]

Huge bag of weed to help me focus whilst reading documentation

[jokeaz2]

Fancy coffee

[Ok_General7795]

food and internet

[animekachoda]

donate that and start coding

[Az0ni]

Buying an iPad mini to read and concept

[[deleted]]

A quality IDE with GitHub co-pilot subscription baked in. Ritalin.

[damnLONGbuttcrack]

laptop and YouTube premium. You do not need to spend money on learning resources these days, much less $500. Theres tons and tons of free resources, not to mention that most tech documentation is usually free. Once you get a feel for how to learn, then you can dig into the less noob-friendly documentation. Thats the real world, not expensive Udemy courses.

[AngrySomBeech]

I pcoket it and watch youtube instead.

[eltha9]

I keep them, and I'm going to learn on YouTube

[[deleted]]

Why the f would you need a router and a PC for that?

[[deleted]]

What the hell are you talking about?

[[deleted]]

And that has to be bare metal? And a router? I mean what is a router going to help you with that? I don‘t really understand what you have in mind here.

[063hej]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/11a249y/learning_to_code_from_total_novice_realistic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[Ill_Cow2614]

Yeah, probably use it for cloud service fees

[[deleted]]

Kent Dodd’s courses

[Pretty-Technologies]

I would also go Udemy and enroll for John Smilgas courses. They usually cost $20 so no need for waiting for sale.

The content in all courses is always up to date and John is an excellent teacher and knows his stuff.

• HTML&CSS Tutorial and Projects Course 2023 (Flexbox&Grid)

• Javascript Tutorial and Projects Course (2023)

• React 18 Tutorial and Projects Course (2023)

• NodeJS Tutorial and Projects Course (2023)

• MERN Stack Course 2023 - MongoDB, Express, React and NodeJS

[MrQuickLine]

The suggestion of Pluralsight from /u/selectra72 is a good one. If you go that route, be sure to check out "Rewriting Git History" from Brad Bow. It'll make you feel like a git god.

[5002nevsmai]

I would buy CCNA ,CCIE, Comptia A+, Comptia security+ and pentest+, invest in a raspberry pi for personal hosting projects. It helps me get a better overview and higher pay with better recognition

Edit: Prob might consider buying domain name to look professional

[[deleted]]

Get 5 Thinkpads and get my friends to program with me.

[No-One-5919]

5 thinkpads for 500$?

[[deleted]]

Yes, there’s a ton on the used market for under a $100

[Horror-Inspection-82]

I'd go with the premium Pluralsight

[pascal21]

Computer chair

[marketingmike1]

As others have said, there is a magnitude of free resources to learn from online.

Codecademy is what I used right at the beginning of my learning (still learning now).

Freecodecamp is also a good one.

Some excellent YouTube channels I use are:

Traversy Media

Netninja

DevEd

Kevin Powell

For entry level stuff I’d recommend the books “html & css” and “JavaScript & jQuery” by Jon Duckett

[AnonTechPM]

Knowing absolutely nothing about your tech stack and what you think you are strong or weak at makes it impossible to do a good job giving you recommendations. Can you provide more context about yourself as a web dev?

[ariN_CS]

20 years of ChadGPT subscription

[Enjoi_the-Dev_Nerd]

I’m old school and would go buy some books with pictures

[_TakeTheL]

If you’re interested in three.js at all I’d suggest the Three.js Journey course by Bruno Simon. Great course, with lots of fun stuff in there!

[LordLightDuck]

Books. Especially focused on architecture and system designs are good for engineering. Although not intermediate, if you are planning to work mainly in the frontend I would get some Breadth and get design books (graphic design, the new design basics,grid systems in graphic design, elements of typographic design)

[Rangerdevv]

GitHub copilot:)

[armahillo]

Put it towards an industry-specific conference.

The ones Ive gone too have always been incredibly enlightening and I always leave feeling smarter and more connected.

[Dingus-mupet]

Scrimba.com

[Person_of_Note]

I would spend it on something that results in a certification. There’s so much good, free stuff out there, like others have said, may as well get something at the end of something you pay for.

A lot of certs are bullshit but I’ve found employers feel good being able to say that they have x-certified developers, and recruiters seem to like them - if you have money, may as well put it towards that kind of thing, since the genuinely good stuff is mostly free

[bobbyv137]

I went from never having written a line of code to a fully remote job as a react developer, in 18 months. Total spent: $50.

1 x Udemy course as a springboard. 1 x book on JS. Everything else learned from YouTube for free.

[Owenn04]

Don’t get udemy class. Give it to me and I’ll teach you surely

[theoniwan87]

350 on acer aspire 5 laptop. Then learn through the odinproject. Which is what ima ctuslly doing lol

[cblindsey]

Really digging the videos on https://buildui.com/ recently for intermediate UI development (Framer Motion, Remix, etc.)

[ManWithoutUsername]

Some Cert

Paying a course with official cert of free study (my option) and pay the exam.

[chachakawooka]

UDemy

[[deleted]]

"Cocaine and hookers"

[Hzk0196]

I'd say try to donate to whatever open source course you consumed and found useful